Region mops up following deluge
Record rain overwhelms sewers, causing widespread flooding
Fears of a tornado setting down in Essex County didn’t come to fruition, but that didn’t stop Tuesday ’s torrential storm from setting a rainfall record, causing power outages and flooding, and reducing an Amherstburg landmark to rubble. As of 1 p.m. Wednesday, the City of Windsor had received reports of 210 flooded homes. Ward 4 was the hardest hit with 80 reports of flooding. Dwayne Dawson, the city’s executive director of operations, said there was also surface flooding on several streets in that area. “Some of it would be some aging infrastructure,” Dawson said Wednesday. “But we are seeing a lot more localized and intense rainfalls. Last night we saw areas that got over an inch of rain in 15 minutes. The sewers obviously just can’t handle that volume of water coming at it. So you’re going to see some surging of the sewers quickly, and then it drains away after that. But there’s a short period of time where the backup does occur quickly.”
Gerald Cheng, a meteorologist for Environment Canada, said the storm set a single day record of 47.5 mm of rainfall, easily beating out the previous high water mark of 32 mm from Sept. 25, 1945. Along with hundreds of swamped homes, the heavy rains caused flooding at the Windsor Youth Centre.
Executive director Ron Dunn of the Downtown Mission, which runs the Wyandotte Street youth centre, said the basement was flooded with three inches of water. Environment Canada issued a tornado warning at 8:38 p.m. that was sent to mobile devices, radio and TV broadcasts across Essex County through the Alert Ready system.
“It was all radar based,” said Cheng. “So we looked at the radar and we thought those storms would be capable of producing tornadoes. So far there were no reports of tornadoes at all.” While there were no Canadian reports of tornadoes, the U.S. National Weather Service said an EF-1 twister did touch down in Monroe County, Mich., across the water from Amherstburg. It hit speeds of about 160 km/h, cut a path seven kilometres wide, uprooted large trees and damaged a dozen homes.
Cheng said there were reports of downed trees and hydro poles in Chatham-Kent.
“There was a wind gust of 70 km/h reported there,” he said. “Also, there were some trees down, branches down in the area. We also have reports of flooding in Tilbury.”
Barbara Peirce Marshall, Enwin’s manager of corporate communications, said the storm knocked out power to about 975 homes, mostly in the South Windsor and Roseland areas. She said the outage lasted about three hours. Most homes had the power restored by midnight.
Heavy winds also destroyed the large brick Amherstburg welcome sign that was adorned with names of community groups at the town’s north entrance.
“It’s gone,” said Mayor Aldo DiCarlo. “It’s a pile of bricks on the ground. What’s really strange is it’s next to a wooden sign, a big wooden billboard, and the wooden billboard is fine. It must have been a pretty narrow straight line wind that just took everything in that narrow path.”