July 23, 2024

On Tuesday, July 16th, severe flooding in 16 Mile Creek and Oakville Harbour led to a significant rescue operation involving Oakville Marine Search and Rescue (OMSAR), the Halton Police Marine Unit, and the town of Oakville.

It was part of a severe weather pattern that hit the Southern Ontario / Greater Toronto Area. CBC interviewed David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, who said the system that brought the rainfall was “unique” from a meteorological perspective.

It was actually a series of separate storms that consecutively drenched the GTA, but particularly the city of Toronto, Phillips said. About 98 millimetres of rainfall was recorded at Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, while roughly 84 millimetres fell in the downtown core of Toronto within a few hours, according to Environment Canada.

“It was the intensity. We saw 30 millimetres of rain in 30 minutes. That rivals what you would see in a jungle kind of situation,” Phillips said.

It has already been an unusually wet spring and summer in much of the GTA. From April 1 until yesterday, the region was drenched in roughly 166 per cent of the rainfall it would typically see in that same period, Phillips said.

“The ground is saturated and river courses are full,” he added.

In the case of the Oakville flooding, multiple sources at the scene said boats from the Oakville Power Boat Club were dislodged and bounced down the creek. OMSAR reported that the flooding on July 16, 2024, caused large 30-meter sections of dock, with vessels ranging from 20 to 45 feet attached, to break loose and drift downstream into Lake Ontario and the harbour. Approximately 20 boats were affected.

Rescue crews also successfully evacuated 26 people from small sailing dinghies located 0.5 nautical miles offshore, south of Oakville West Pier. The team also escorted a damaged 24-foot Yamaha jet boat to safety at Bronte Outer Harbour Gas Dock.

The mission report from OMSAR also says that crews monitored an unattended, drifting dock and a 28-foot cruiser one nautical mile east of Oakville, ensuring the vessel and its owner were able to safely get to Bronte. Damage estimates have not yet been made available. 

OMSAR did not report any injuries as a result of the operation in the mission report but this was a sobering reminder that Ontario and other parts of Canada can suffer dramatic storms and flooding that would normally be associated with other regions in the south.