Heavy rains have finally stopped in much of Quebec after the remnants of tropical storm Nicole swept through the province on Friday, sparking flood watches and closing roads and contributing to at least two deaths.
The storm dumped 70 millimetres of rain on the Montreal area, while 90 mm fell on Sherbrooke, where high water levels forced roads to close.
A 66-year-old nun also died in Sherbrooke after falling from her roof, which she had been trying to repair. Horrified neighbours witnessed her fall.
In Saint-Calixte, north of Montreal, a 53-year-old man drowned while trying to unclog a culvert.
The rains also flooded countless basements.
"It was coming out of the toilet and the bath tub," said homeowner Annie Beauvais. "In 15 minutes the basement was full."
Qualinet, a Quebec company that cleans up after floods, said it had received about 350 calls on Friday -- more than 30 times the usual number.
Environment Canada had issued heavy rainfall warnings for a swath of southern Quebec stretching from the Eastern Townships to the Gaspe peninsula as the fading storm marched north through the U.S.
But Environment Canada said Quebec would not be quite so badly drenched as the U.S., predicting up to 80 millimetres of rain in the affected regions through Saturday morning.
South of the border
Nicole caused flash floods in the Caribbean earlier in the week before moving north across the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.
Bands of storm clouds dumped as much as an inch of rain an hour on the U.S. Northeast, forcing evacuations, toppling trees, cutting power to thousands and washing out roads at the height of the morning rush hour.
Water pooled so deeply in one Philadelphia suburb that a car literally floated on top of another.
The storm that killed five people in North Carolina on Thursday, and left at least 12 dead in Jamaica, soaked dozens of major U.S. cities, including New York City and Philadelphia.
Flights coming into LaGuardia Airport in New York were delayed up to three hours and traffic into Manhattan was delayed by up to an hour under the pounding rain.
Nearly 50,000 homes and businesses were left without power after the storm knocked down transmission lines across Connecticut, New Jersey and New York state. But many affected areas had their electricity restored by midmorning.
Firefighters in the Philadelphia area used a ladder truck to pull residents of a flooded-out apartment block out through the upper-floor windows of the building. Cars were submerged up to their windows, and a graphic artist found another vehicle floating atop his car.
Rainfall totals in the Philadelphia area were over 250 millimetres.
"It's terrible. I've never seen it this bad," motorist Maria Scognamiglio told The Associated Press on New York's Long Island, an area plagued by storm-related road closures.
The massive rains had earlier hit North Carolina the hardest, including one town which took on 300 mm of rain in six hours -- nearly a quarter of its usual annual rainfall.
Four people, including two children, were killed when their SUV skidded off a highway about 233 kilometres east of Raleigh and plunged into a water-filled ditch, North Carolina troopers said. A fifth victim likely drowned when his pickup veered off the road and into a river that was raging because of the rain.
Forecasters are warning residents in the path of the storm of possible flash flooding and buffeting winds.
Sheila Mezroud said sandbags kept floodwaters out of her Carolina Beach home for only a short time.
"I have to walk through an inch of water to get from the living room to the bathroom," she said.
The rain caused several other wrecks Thursday, including a crash between two transit buses in Maryland that left 26 people injured. Standing waters and fallen limbs on tracks slowed several Amtrak trains, while some Northeast airports reported flight delays of up to three hours.
After a mostly dry summer around the Northeast, the fall storm provided inches of much-needed rain. New Jersey has been under a drought watch for nearly two months.
With a report from CTV Montreal's Rob Lurie and files from The Associated Press
