Flooding submerges parts of Woodbine Beach, including volleyball courts

Crews scramble to prevent flooding along lake A bit of a reprieve for residents of Toronto Island and the Beaches but efforts continue to prevent flooding along the lakeshore.

Much of Woodbine Beach is underwater today after the city was inundated with more than 50 millimetres of rain over a two-day period.

According to Environment Canada, there was a total of 52.9 millimetres of rainfall in downtown Toronto between Thursday afternoon and 8 a.m. Saturday.

The rain caused rivers and creeks to overflow their banks in some parts of the city and left many homeowners with flooded basements.

Meanwhile, in the city’s east end the rain and the heavy winds that accompanied it forced waves onto the beach, submerging about half of the volleyball courts as well as vast tracts of sand along the boardwalk.

The flooding of Woodbine Beach comes after several days of work to pump out some of the water that had pooled on the beach in recent weeks amid unusually high lake levels.

The beach volleyball season at Woodbine Beach was scheduled to begin on Monday.

“I was here a couple days ago and they had done fantastic work pumping out a bit of this water and some of it was drying out but the wave action from yesterday has made the lake bigger than ever and has taken out some of the volleyball courts and more importantly just reduced the size of this beach,” Mayor Tory told CP24 prior to receiving a tour of the flooding on Saturday morning. “We will have to see what happens with the winds and the waves and the work they will do next week. But there is no question it restored some of the damage that had been fixed in previous days.”

Lake levels near record high

The water levels in Lake Ontario are currently at levels that have not been seen since the 1970’s and Tory said those near-record high water levels are the primary culprit for the current state of the beach, more so than the heavy rain.

With water levels expected to continue to rise for at least the next month, Tory said that there could be some “short-term effects” on beach activities, including the Victoria Day weekend fireworks.

Nonetheless, Tory said he is confident that the beach will be restored to its previous state.

“Whatever it costs it is going to get done,” he said.

‘We are dealing with the lake’

Because water levels are expected to continue to rise for the next month, any temporary fix to the flooding is likely impossible.

According to the city’s manager of Waterfront Parks James Dann, crews have worked to protect a historic lifeguard station but will not be able to do anything to reclaim the beach until water levels begin to subside.

“We are dealing with the lake. There is nothing we can do from a sandbagging perspective. We have already tried with the heavy equipment to move the sand around to create natural barriers. Until that lake level goes down we are going to see the ponding that is taking place, though,” he said. “After that we are not sure about how long it will take the pond to go down in levels. We will be pumping later on in the season but right now if we were pumping it would just be coming right back in with any storm.”

More rain in the forecast

Environment Canada had issued a rainfall alert for the Toronto and the GTA, however that alert was lifted early Saturday morning as the rain finally began to subside.

Though rain is still in the forecast for Saturday, it is not expected to exceed one to two millimeteres per hour.

In a news release issued on Saturday afternoon, the city said that crews will continue monitoring for excessive ponding and flooding and will be out clearing catch basins and patrolling low-lying areas that have been susceptible to flooding in the past.

So far, the city says that its crews have placed 4,000 sandbags along shorelines throughout the city and responded to 200 basement flooding calls.

City crews also remain busy on the Toronto Islands, where high water levels have caused the flooding of some homes and have threatened others.

Ferry service remains restricted to residents and emergency personnel.