Montrealers dealing with aftermath of severe thunderstorm

Mostly clear skies and sun on Friday in Montreal atop Mount royal. It’s drastically different from Thursday afternoon after a severe thunderstorm ripped through the city, dumping a months worth of rain in a matter of two hours. Streets flooding, some caught on highways and underpasses – trapped in their vehicles.

“The car in front of me I guess stalled because the water level was too high and therefore I got stuck,” said Elisa Dahan.

“I was trapped in my car for about 30 minutes. It was a bit crazy, there was a really nice man and two women that were in the water helping push cars. My car had stopped completely, I couldn’t even put it in neutral, so they ended up coming to my car and this man pulled me out of the window,” she explained. “It took hours and we kept having to call the tow truck. But at 12:30 they came to get my car back , which was still here. There was no water, it was like nothing ever happened.”

Elisa Dahan’s vehicle stuck in water during Montreal’s thunderstorm on July 13, 2023. (Photo Courtesy: Elisa Dahan)

#WATCH: “The water level was too high so I got stuck, I was trapped in my car for 30 minutes,” says Elisa Dahan, who drove through a flooded underpass in Côte-Saint-Luc Thursday during the severe thunderstorm that hit Montreal.

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— CityNews Montreal (@CityNewsMTL) July 14, 2023

Hundreds of thousands were without power and 150,000 still in the dark this morning. Environment Canada confirmed one tornado touched down north of Montreal in Mirabel and they’re investigating other possible ones.

No injuries or major damages reported. One injury reported after a confirmed tornado in Barrhaven, near Ottawa, earlier on Thursday.

“Environment right now there are teams from the Western Ontario University that are investigating everything that had happened yesterday, and they will move through the Quebec area as well to find any track of any possible tornadoes,” said Simon Legault.

“So we heard rumors or we saw video of possible tornadoes or funnel clouds in the Vaudreil area, even some damages Sorel as well. So there are many areas that have been impacted yesterday, but there were quite high winds as well.

Montrealers CityNews spoke to Friday morning described issues they’ve faced due to the storm.

“Now I’m just worried about my food in the freezer. I made a food order on the first and that’s the only thing I’m worried about, power goes out out, usually it comes back in a few hours around here,” said Kevin Luc Bibeau.

At Share the Warmth in Montreal’s Pointe St Charles, a non profit and food bank that serves 2,000. Staff and volunteers were working in the dark, getting ready to open their market with worries about their fridge and freezer supply, but at 10:30 a.m., the lights turned back on to the cheers of staff.

#WATCH: “We’ll be running as usual,” says Riley Tan of Share the Warmth, after the non-profit was affected by the power outages due to the storm. They were worried about the their fridge and freezer supply for their food bank amid the outage.

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— CityNews Montreal (@CityNewsMTL) July 14, 2023

“Luckily this means that we won’t lose the market produce, so we’ll be able to store that over the weekend, but its also a relief when it goes back on because we were looking at quiet a bit of loss with our food ban,” said Riley Tan, Share the Warmth.

“We’ve had to empty all the fridges that we can, typically these are filled to the brim, with milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt, the variety of producers we serve every week.”

By 4:30 p.m., over 58,000 Quebecers were still off the grid.

“At least it’s not cold, the sun’s out, hang in there,” said Bibeau.