A severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch have been issued. Severe thunderstorms producing hail and destructive gusts hit southern Quebec and eastern Ontario on Thursday, according to Environment Canada.

In the early evening, the alert was lifted in most regions of Quebec, except the Parent and Gouin reservoir sectors, northwest of La Tuque, where violent thunderstorms are expected tonight.

Hydro-Quebec said the storms caused outages. “The outages are mainly caused by vegetation coming into contact with the network following strong winds,” the state-owned company communicated on its website Thursday evening.

Around 9 p.m., more than 35,000 Hydro-Québec customers were without power, mainly in Montérégie, Montreal, and the Laurentians.

Ottawa was also affected by bad weather. Several dozen Hydro Ottawa customers are without power, mainly in the Rideau-Goulbourn area.

In the rest of Ontario, Hydro One also had several outages due to weather conditions.

At Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, most flights were canceled or delayed Thursday night.

Torrential rains

Thursday afternoon, Environment Canada meteorologists were monitoring “an area of severe thunderstorms that can produce very strong gusts, from hail the size of a nickel to a ping-pong ball and heavy rain” in the Montreal area.

Large hailstones were indeed observed by Montreal residents around 4 p.m.

The federal agency had indicated that the torrential rains would “probably cause flash floods and water accumulation on the roads”.

At the end of the afternoon, the Ministry of Transport had to close Highway 15 at the exit to Highway 40 East due to flooding.

Videos posted by motorists on social media showed flooded Montreal highways, with some vehicles having water up to the top of their wheels.

The bad weather also caused fires. In Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, two residences were ravaged by fire and a third was damaged, said the Caserne Sainte-Thérèse on Facebook. Damage was extensive, but the fire was brought under control by early evening.

Around 6 p.m., more than 22 mm of rain fell in less than an hour in Saint-Rémi, in Montérégie, according to the specialized site Agrométéo.

In Montreal, the metro service was interrupted in several places due to water infiltration, before resuming in the evening, said the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) on Twitter.

The thunderstorms also forced the Francos de Montréal organization to cancel the 7 p.m. shows on the Bell stage and the Sirius XM stage.