Tropical storm Leslie is howling across Newfoundland and Labrador with winds as high as 130 km per hour in the provincial capital, causing property damage, downed trees and power outages.

The Canadian Hurricane Center, which is tracking the storm, says that Leslie has been crossing the middle of the island - and it will be three to four hours before the centre of the storm exits north of Gander. It will then head out over the ocean racing toward Iceland.

The winds will gradually diminish throughout the day and there will be even sunny periods and Fall-like conditions, Chris Fogarty, the centre’s program supervisor told reporters in a conference call Tuesday.

“So this storm is moving through very quickly,” said Mr. Fogarty, adding, however, that “structural damage is quite prominent” in St. John’s.

“If the storm had come a few hours earlier it would have been worse for the southern part of the province due to the storm surge and high tides,” said Mr. Fogarty. “So fortunately it arrived at low tide but there are very, very high waves coming up in Placentia Bay...”

The storm is being characterized now as a “post tropical storm” because of the way in which it is structured - the strong winds and rains are spread out from the centre of the hurricane.

Tropical storm Leslie has not come with the amount of rain that Igor did two years ago when it battered Newfoundland. Its wind speeds are also not as high as those of Igor, which saw gusts around 150 km per hour.

Last year in September, two tropical storms - Ophelia and Maria - hit Newfoundland but did not cause a huge amount of damage.

Leslie, meanwhile, appeared to be largely bypassing Prince Edward Island.

On Monday, the unsettled weather caused flooding in Truro, a town in the centre of Nova Scotia, with just over 100 millimetres of rain in a six-hour period --  as much rain the town would see in the entire month of September.

Earth Changes Media


Mitch Battros | 



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