It was the worst thunderstorm of the season – with about 20,000 left without hydro – and the cleanup began in earnest Thursday.
On Wednesday, numerous trees fell on properties, causing significant damage to homes and vehicles, as wind gusts climbed as high as 85 kilometres per hour.
For one family, both their house and car were hit by a large branch.
“We now have a very damaged car and we'll have to get our house looked at,” says Lynn Whitty, who lives in Wortley Village.
“I heard the first branch hit the house and the car and then about five minutes later the other branch just slowly fell backwards into the house next door.”
Whitty says it happened around 5:30 p.m., an hour after Environment Canada had issued a tornado warning.
There were reports of more than 4,000 strikes of lightning in two hours and 50 millimetres of rain fell in most areas.
The storm kept hydro crews busy.
“We started mostly in the northwest area, but as the night progressed and the second band of thunderstorms rolled through along with a great deal of lightning, we ended up at the height of the storm with about 5,000 customers without power,” says London Hydro’s Nancy Hutton.
In the region, as many as 20,000 homes were without hydro for a time.
Most of the power was restored by Thursday morning. Hutton says London Hydro has spent a lot of funds refurbishing their infrastructure over the last 10 years.
“When something like this happens, it's out of the normal for Londoners, so people I think are kind of taken back a little bit that power is out for the length of time that it has been.”
For some students, there was no school Thursday, including at Medway High School in Arva, as power was still out.
