Harsh winds swept across Southern Ontario Monday afternoon, knocking over a tractor-trailer north of Toronto, damaging bus shelters and downing power lines.
Environment Canada issued a warning and said gusts of 96 kilometres an hour had been recorded at London's airport.
The warm winds are moving ahead of a cold front. They passed through London early in the afternoon and reached Toronto just before rush hour, the department said, before heading to Eastern Ontario.
Shortly after 3 p.m., the gusts toppled a semi-trailer on Highway 400 near Canal Road, partway between Vaughan and Barrie, blocking the highway's southbound lanes for about two hours.
Ontario Provincial Police took to Twitter to warn motorists to slow down and drive to the conditions.
OPP Sergeant Dave Woodford said the truck driver was not hurt in the crash and that there were other, smaller collisions nearby.
"I can hardly talk because the wind is so strong," he said.
Across the city, several bus shelters were cracked by the stress of the wind, including one at the busy intersection of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue in midtown.
The gusts also knocked out electricity in several places. A spokeswoman for Toronto Hydro said there were small pockets, including one in Scarborough and another in North York, where crews were working to restore power to a couple of dozen homes.
A storm centre website maintained by Hydro One, which provides electricity in swaths of the province outside Toronto, showed several small outages along a band stretching form Chatham to Bancroft. It was not immediately clear which outages were due to the wind and which to other causes.
Downed power lines forced TTC buses to be rerouted on Davenport and Weston roads.
Environment Canada's wind warnings ended shortly after 9:30 p.m.
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Adrian Morrow