At least one confirmed tornado and possibly two more touched down in Quebec on Thursday as the weather unleashed the province. Environment Canada provided an update on Friday on the weather events that rocked southwestern Quebec and the St. Lawrence Valley the day before.
According to the federal agency, “a tornado was observed and confirmed in Mirabel, possibly heading towards Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines thereafter. A funnel cloud was reported in Vaudreuil as well as another in Sorel-Tracy”. Confirmations are in progress in these last two cases.
Environment Canada is working with the Northern Tornadoes Project and promises a full assessment as soon as more information becomes available.
However, meteorologist Simon Legault of Environment Canada explained that it will be necessary to wait a few days before having confirmation or not in the cases of Vaudreuil and Sorel-Tracy, the experts still being to precisely assess the contours of that in Ottawa early Thursday afternoon.
Some 125 homes were damaged by this other confirmed tornado in the federal capital.
Torrential rain
All affected areas received rainfall amounts varying between 50 and 90 millimetres, which caused sewer overflows and extensive flooding in several municipalities.
Environment Canada also reports that “the electrical activity was particularly intense and several fires were started by lightning. Hail of one to two centimeters was reported accompanied by violent gusts, including one reaching 111 km/h at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport, causing the fall of numerous trees and electric poles as well as damage to several buildings all over southern Quebec”.
Quebec City has been the scene of three fires that are suspected to have been caused by lightning. The Festival d’été de Québec had to cancel and postpone the events scheduled for Thursday evening.
The city of Trois-Rivières and its surroundings were also heavily affected, especially by the rain. There are reports of flooding and damage, especially at Expo TR. The Mauritian city was also the place where the configuration of the meteorological system made it possible to take exceptional photos of the cloud cell, shots which circulate abundantly on social networks.
Breakdowns down
The number of outages continued to fall during the day on Friday, but there were still 117,000 customers without electricity at 1:00 p.m. The regions most affected were, in order, Montérégie, Montreal, Lanaudière, Laval and Laurentians.
Although nearly 540,000 Hydro-Quebec customers were left without power at 2:30 p.m. Thursday due to the forest fires, this situation was quickly corrected, but the violent storms immediately brought the numbers back up.
“The heavy rain mixed with the wind caused the trees to come into contact with the wires,” explained Maryse Dalpé, senior director of network operations at Hydro-Québec, during a press briefing.
“Some (trees) are stronger and the contact is light, the breakdown is easier to repair, but some have broken. When it breaks, it’s a tree that sags on our network and we can think of very heavy damage because these are broken poles. »
She said that in some areas, heavier damage will involve work on Saturday and Sunday, so citizens will have to be patient.
Montreal will have to adapt
A little earlier, the spokesperson for the City of Montreal, Philippe Sabourin, had taken stock of the damage in the metropolis. More than 130 residences were flooded, more than a hundred trees fell as well as hundreds of branches. Half a dozen viaducts that had to be closed due to accumulations of water had been reopened on Friday morning.
Mr. Sabourin explained that heavy investments will be required to adapt to such events, in particular the construction of retention basins, “huge underground cathedrals”, he imagined, in order to retain excess rainwater. .