Wind warnings, snow squall watches and warnings and blowing snow advisories remain in place for most of Southern Ontario Sunday evening as a swift cold front moves across the region.
The winds began to pick up early Sunday afternoon, reaching gusts of close to 80 kilometres per hour along the Lake Ontario shoreline - an improvement on anticipated gusts of 110 to 120 kilometres per hour, but still enough to cause minor damage to the roof of Rogers Centre.
However, areas to the south of the GTA are feeling the brunt of the storm, with power outages and storm damage being reporting throughout the Niagara region. , areas along the shores of Lake Erie and the north shores of Lake Ontario will feel the worst of the storm.
In Toronto, hydro crews were dealing with some scattered outages Sunday afternoon, including a large outage in the area of York University that lasted for several hours. Both Toronto Hydro and Hydro One said they were prepared for hundreds of outages across the city, the GTA and the province.
Environment Canada meteorologist Gerald Cheng told NEWSTALK1010 the most dangerous conditions - with the combination of winds and snow - would be late Sunday afternoon into the evening.
"That's when the strongest gusts usually happen but having said that, we are looking at temperatures free-falling into the next few hours," Cheng said. "When we get into tonight, there will be some flurries and they could be heavy at times combined with the strong winds."
Motorists, especially truck drivers, are being encouraged to take extra care on the roads Sunday evening through Monday morning. The OPP were on the Burlington Skyway - one of the most dangerous bridges in high winds - helping to slow traffic down in both directions once the winds began to batter the area.
Strong winds were also responsible for knocking down trees along the Woodbine Beach boardwalk in Toronto, damaging a church steeple in Newmarket and closing part of the Niagara River Parkway, where strong winds blew ice over the retaining wall from the lake.
@NiagParksPolice advising that @NiagaraParks Roads Department closing Niagara River Parkway near Mathers Arch. Strong winds blowing ice over the retaining wall from the lake. Drive with caution. Video courtesy @NiagRegPolice Insp. Garvey.... pic.twitter.com/RdXh5HYxfx
— Niagara Parks Police (@NiagParksPolice) February 24, 2019
For the remainder of Sunday evening into Monday, Cheng says Toronto will see about 4 to 6 centimetres of snow in total, although outside the city will see higher amounts. Newmarket, for example, may see a total of 15 centimetres.
"It's actually quite dangerous because we've had this really mild spell during the weekend and people don't expect wintry weather," he said. "Suddenly we get into some heavy flurries, lake effect flurries, snow squalls up north. So this is really a shift in gears and we want people to be aware of the weather changes."
That means Monday morning won't be the most pleasant commute to work and school.
"This system is going to take its time to leave because it's still giving us gusty conditions on Monday and even towards the end of the day, we're still looking at wind gusts of 60 kilometres per hour," Cheng said.
The system will finally exit the GTA on Monday evening.