Toronto streets remained blanketed with ice and snow Sunday as freezing rain pounded the GTA for a second day.Many streets were left unplowed, Mayor John Tory said at a morning media briefing, because the temperature is forecast to rise well above freezing overnight.“If you plow all of that slush onto the side of the road, it dramatically increases the chances of flooding later on,” Tory said.“We can’t just look on what’s going on in this hour, or the next two hours, we have to look at what’s going to happen in the next 12 hours,” he added. “Flooding is as serious as the difficult road conditions today, in fact more serious.”Tory said the city’s priority would be road salt, which lessens slippery conditions without boosting the chances of flooding.He said the decision to limit plowing was a judgement call made with a “long view in mind,” and that the city had contingency funds to pay for extra plowing if it was needed.The storm, which slammed into Toronto on Saturday, brought ice pellets early Sunday morning, but Environment Canada said the freezing rain that followed was expected to become showers in the afternoon, followed by heavy rain that could total 20 to 25 millimetres.Tory said that despite slowdowns on the roads, the city was dealing with weather conditions that had been forecast.“Police and fire have reported very little out of the ordinary,” he said. “Whatever may come our way in the next 24 hours, we`re ready to deal with it.”Meteorologist Geoff Coulson says that this weather is quite unusual for the month of April.“To look out my window and see white out there, isn’t something we see very often in Toronto during April,” he said. “This freezing rain should gradually change to rain by the evening, though, but will remain steady.”Environment Canada says the lowest temperature recorded in Toronto on April 15 was -3 C in 2016, and ...
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