Montreal was drenched in record-breaking rain and hundreds of thousands of homes were plunged into darkness across Quebec as tropical storm Debby‘s last gasps hit eastern Canada on Friday.
“The torrential rains that fell on Quebec yesterday caused flooding in several homes and damage in several regions,” Quebec Premier François Legault wrote on social media Saturday morning.
“The Quebec government supports affected municipalities. My thoughts are with all those who have suffered a disaster or material losses.”
Montreal smashed its all-time daily record of rain after it received 157 millimetres, according to Environment Canada. It broke the last record for rainfall set back in November 1996.
The heavy precipitation was due to the remnants of tropical storm Debby and a low pressure system that had formed over the Great Lakes.
The downpour flooded homes and roads across the province, while knocking out power for more than 500,000 Hydro-Québec customers at the peak of outages.
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The public utility says strong wind gusts led to the widespread outages and that teams remain on the ground Saturday morning. As of 6:30 a.m., more than 160,000 clients were still without power.
“We are mobilizing all available teams to restore service as quickly as possible,” Hydro-Québec said in an update on its website.
The wet weather also descended on parts of Ontario, bringing about 76 millimetres of rain to Ottawa. In Toronto, between 25 and 50 millimetres of rain was expected.
The remnants of the storm are expected to dump 40 to 60 millimetres on New Brunswick through Saturday morning.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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