Friday, August 19, 2005
Okay, the title is overkill, but it was certainly an interesting day weather-wise.
It all started mid-afternoon when it was obvious to anyone that a sizable storm was coming. I was hoping that I would be able to go home before having to brave the worst of it, but that didn't happen.
Around 3:30-ish it had started to look a lot worse, and I noticed that distinctive green colour the sky gets that signifies possible tornado weather. Uh oh. I looked online and there, on the Environment Canada Web site, was a tornado warning for the Markham area. Yipes!
The sort of heavy rain typically associated with an extreme but short downburst just kept coming down unabated for the better part of an hour. The small rivulet outside my window doubled in width in about 10 minutes. We saw a very water-logged rabbit appear from "downstream", its hole obviously flooded, looking for shelter upstream, which it found under some of the ornamental rocks under my window. We also saw a lightning strike hit the transformer across the street from us, plunging Commerce Valley 1 East across the street from us in darkness, save for the flashing emergency lights.
When it became darkest, the winds started whipping around the building, making the spindly trees outside prove just how flexible they were. That must have been a micro-burst (no funnel clouds in sight), and I did wonder whether the pressure differential might start popping out windows, but none did. Later, judging by the people waiting by the entrance trying to figure out when would be the best time to dash outside to their cars, that was likely never an issue.
A colleague offered to give myself and another work associate a lift to the nearest subway station, since buses seemed few and far between (we did see the 4pm Don Mills 25D bus head south though). We made the dash to his car and started on what would be an epic journey.
First we headed down Don Mills. Traffic started to get really bad immediately south of Steeles, and then we saw cars starting to pull U-turns and head back north. When we got closer, we saw why: flooding. One of the Don Mills 25 buses was dead in the water, with water touching the top of its tires. Couldn't tell whether it was just stuck in traffic or just plain stuck, but we could see a couple of cars further ahead who were clearly dead in the water.
An adjacent car lane flooded
So we doubled back and started to head west along Steeles. Also ran into flooding there, and we had to ford in water that was probably mid-way up the wheels of the car at one point. Got into another traffic jam at this point, and the reason was the same as last time. In a residential area not far south of Steeles was a small gulley, and in it we could see a couple of cars with water up to their windows. The water surrounding it was very muddy looking, and cars deciding to venture up side-streets drove up huge plumes of brown water. The following may sound like I made it up but it was true: a local resident had gotten out a small boat and was paddling over to the partially submerged cars, obviously trying to lend a hand. It was at around this point that I wished I had my camera with me, and then I realized I did have my older Nikon camera in my backpack. The batteries were almost toast, but I was able to shoot a few illustrative shots, the best couple seen here.
Decided to head east along Steeles to Victoria Park and see if we could head south from there. In several places we saw where manhole covers had popped off from the force of the water below. In a couple of sections we could see where the road had buckled and subsided, presumably because the ground underneath it had been eaten away by the flow of water.
The deepest the water got for us was a few blocks east from Don Mills close to where Siebel has its headquarters. There were a couple of dips in the road, and the water was at least half-way up the tires of the cars. On the other side of the road for people heading west it was clear a bit deeper, and we could see a couple of cars whose engines obviously drowned when their drivers tried to venture across them.
Cars plowing through flooded roads in Markham
Just a bit further we could see another watery patch and that some people had decided to drive onto the median instead of driving in the road. We noticed a low-slung sports car make its way through that patch, so we figured we could too (we were in a standard sedan). So we gently plowed through, driving large bow waves on either side of the vehicle. It was amusing to note that the people driving the cars behind us were very confused, not knowing whether they should drive on the median or do what we did.
Just beyond that we could look down upon the Don Valley Parkway. We had earlier considered taking it but found the overpass to it closed for regular road repair. It was just as well, since we could see a large pond had developed in the west-most lanes heading south. We could see one hapless car in the middle of it where the water was up to its window. Its owner was up on the small hill immediately above his vehicle, talking away on this cellphone. He was definitely going to be "late" for wherever he was planning on getting to.
When we reached Victoria Park, it was stop-and-go traffic from that point on, but the street is on consistently high ground, so we could watch the storm effects from a relatively safe vantage point. There were no more floods, but we could see the rivulets of rainwater running downhill, creating small streams, the water running past drains that were clogged with fallen leaves. I did see a couple of trees that had fallen, but thankfully none of the ones I saw did any major damage to anything other than themselves.
We were listening to the AM Radio Talk 680, and heard the various reports of flooding everywhere, which turned out to be worst in Markham. An eyewitness also mentioned that the community centre in Fergus has been flattened, the descriptions of the devastation matching the typical pattern of a tornado.
Just before we made our way westward off of Steeles onto Bayview, we caught sight of a large circular rainbow in the east.
When we arrived at the Don Mills subway station, it was two full hours after we had left the office. There was no problem on the subways and it was evident by the time we hit the open-air stations downtown that while there was a lot of rain, it was an order of magnitude less than we experienced in Markham. The only other spectacle of note was viewing the Don River when crossing the bridge between Castlefrank and Broadview stations. It was well over its banks, and had flooded part of the lowest part of the highway it was adjacent too. I could see the distinctive turquoise and orange of a Beck taxi attempting to ford the waters that had crept onto the roadway. As my co-worker commented to me when he saw that, "guess I won't be bicycling along the Don bike path much this weekend".
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