Wild weather

Anyone in Toronto (and most of the GTHA) Wed. experienced some crazy weather.  I had known there was going to be a storm, but it was supposed to be over by 3 or so, so I biked in, but left my bike in the bike storage room (which I don't usually bother doing).

Around 4, the rain just came down in sheets.  It was actually going sideways most of the time (since there were gusts of wind close to 100 km/hour).  I didn't see it, but apparently it rained so hard that the Eaton Centre sprung a leak and it rained inside the mall and some of the stores!

I was getting pretty antsy, as I had to leave early to pick up a big t-shirt order (which is a story for another day perhaps).  However, the rain came down hard and fast and was done by 4:30 or so.  That said that were still big puddles everywhere, and I definitely felt in some danger, since I wasn't willing to hug the right hand curb (and go through the puddles), which wasn't too popular with some of the drivers.  But I tried to stick to streets with bike lanes as much as possible.

As I came into Riverdale, I started seeing some big branches down on the street, but then I saw an entire street blocked by tree branches that had fallen.  I thought I might be able to scoot around on the sidewalk, but saw that some wires were down as well!  Very scary.  I managed to detour around this using a back alley.

On my street, there were some mid-sized branches that had fallen, including this one on a neighbour's roof!  Not quite sure how they will get that off, but hopefully there is no actual damage to the roof itself.

I still had to finish picking up the t-shirts.  Going under the viaduct at Logan was actually a real problem due to flooding (and the wind was still strong), so I had to work around that, but I eventually made it.  I suppose it could have been worse, particularly if I had been caught in that crazy rain.  What a storm!