Well, last night we had a doozy of a storm. I’m not sure when I’ve seen lightning flashing so brightly and so continuously; literally every second there was a flash somewhere in the sky, and this lasted well over an hour. And the wind… It’s hard to believe how much energy the atmosphere can hold (and release).
As a result of the storm, about 500,000 people were without power last night. This morning, still over 300,000 have no power in the area (about half of them are in the Laurentians, where I guess they have more trees available to fall onto power lines). I didn’t lose power here at all; there were just a few spikes and the lights flickered. Two people died in the storm — one was struck by lightning and the other died when a broken tree branch fell on his car.
And what about the heat? Yesterday we hit 34 degrees, with a humidex of around 45. Today we are only up to a humidex of 38 so far, so it’s a nice cool day…ha ha. But don’t worry — the day is young, and with more of this heat and humidity we’re due for another “doozy” of a thunderstorm tonight.
Meanwhile, Hydro-Québec is making a killing selling our electricity to Ontario and the U.S., where they set hit all-time power consumption records. (We don’t need all the power we can produce right now — Quebec’s peak power consumption occurs in the icy depths of winter.)