One deep breath later.

Jane Street, last night.

Last night, it thunderstormed. A lot. Enough, in fact, that the storm spawned several funnel clouds, at least one of which was powerful enough for most people to consider it a full-blown tornado. The City of Vaughan, which includes the lovely little village sprawling suburb of Maple where I live, was clobbered. But not as hard as Woodbridge, just minutes away, where around 200 homes were destroyed.

Closer to, houses only one street away suffered severe damage, with pieces of roof being peeled off wholesale, the streets full of shingles and fragments of plywood sheeting as a result. Street signs were bent flat to the ground, and I drove through what I guess to be about 30 centimetres of standing water at one point. A friend from around the corner reported seeing a tire fly past her window - prompting her to retreat with her family to the basement.

This morning the weather is beautiful, and city work crews, labouring under the edicts of a municipal state of emergency, have done a stand-up job cleaning up the roads. For the most part, people seem to be taking all this calmly; tornadoes aren't unheard-of in this part of southern Ontario, although generally they stay a little farther north. But many have lost their homes, and one family in Durham has, regrettably, lost their eleven-year-old boy. I'm selfishly trying not to think about that, and breathing more easily now that the weather seems settled.