Residents cleaning up after storm rolls through Waterloo Region

Cleaning up after wild weather From CTV Kitchener’s Carmen Wong: Waterloo Region is cleaning up after a thunderstorm caused flooding and damage in the area.

KITCHENER — People are cleaning up branches and water after a storm hit the Region of Waterloo on Sunday morning.

The storm came with strong winds, lightning and torrential downpour, prompting a tornado warning from Environment Canada.

The water caused some localized flooding in Kitchener.

"I watched the water come down in sheets, pushed by the wind," Kitchener resident Heather MacDougall said.

MacDougall hopes her sump pump will help minimize the water damage.

"Pump the water out of my window wells and, where we were using it, to pump out the remaining water out of the grass in the backyard," she said.

Gusty winds blew through with the storm. Hydro One said more than 9,000 customers in Waterloo Region lost power at one point during the storm.

Cambridge resident Todd Leach said he headed down to the basement and waited for the storm to pass before coming outside to broken trees and fences.

"We lost a tree down the street here, right across the street there's another tree down," Leach said.

Other trees had branches torn right off.

"Unfortunately just happened to happen on our driveway," Kitchener resident Aiden Rice said.

Frank Seglenieks, coordinator of the University of Waterloo weather station, said the storm was fuelled by intense humidity.

"The demarcation between the warm to humid temperatures we've seen in the last few days and this cooler air, that is often marked by really severe weather," he said.

The storm accumulated a lot of rain in a short period of time.

"We got about 20 millimetres, which is pretty good in just about a 15 to 30 minute span," Seglenieks said. "So it was very obviously intense."