What an ice storm: December 21 - 22!

The Golden Horseshoe the hardest hit.
There are about 7 million people living there.

What a terrible storm. There are power outages across southern Ontario, close to 300,000 people are without power. Ontario Hydro has a site which shows the damage, estimated times to be fixed, as well as the number of people who have lost power overnight.

They are calling it Ice Storm 2013 (#icestorm)!

All Internet news webpages are grabbing and gathering photos!
CP24, Yahoo, The Weather Network, CTV collected Twitter photos, Toronto Ice Storm gallery!
People are ice skating on Kingston streets!
Tweeters are complaining about Rob Ford, still. Although, it's not his call to determine it a state of emergency, they are taking it out on him. It's up to the committee, comprised of the various people in charge of various utilities: Toronto Hydro, the TTC, City Manager, and then the city leader declares it so.
Toronto Hydro is having issues keeping its Power Outage report online. They have put a screen capture on Twitter. There are some mean, nasty comments by those without information and power. Everyone is working so hard.

Karen Stintz ‏@karenstintz

For correct up-to-date #TOicestorm travel & safety info pls follow @TorontoPolice @TorontoHydro @TTCnotices @TorontoComms

It's getting worse as trees continue to fall on power lines.

There are lots of great photos of the terrible damage on Twitter.

• @MattBellissimo: Normally I'd blame lightning for something like this... pic.twitter.com/P3wX5lVUe2
• @markzohar: No power. Our road closed due to fallen trees. Wires down. Ice, ice, baby! #darkTO pic.twitter.com/DGbBKt9VYX
• @AdamDeRocco: Happy to know that I started a string of skating and hockey on my street! #ygk #icestorm @Krock1057 @cityofkingston pic.twitter.com/NHabz3F7CM
• @35Lauren: #HamOnt #IceStorm And this is why I'm going to be late for work pic.twitter.com/vbejAVedVh
• Mark Robinson ‏@StormhunterTWN
  Moving around Georgetown is tough right now. Here's why... pic.twitter.com/zGbgDSLB6V
• David T. Chapman ‏@DTChapmanPics5m
  South of Mount Forest #onstorm pic.twitter.com/7VQyzoquzz

For the most part, the ice rain was restricted to the southern parts of the province. Gravenhurst is the outlier, and they've been out for a couple of days.

POWER OUTAGES ONTARIO

Due to the icy power lines,
TTC has stopped the street cars in Toronto. 

Snow, snow. snow!

Dec. 20th, Friday afternoon, they predicted some rain. By 2:30 p.m., I realized that it was just snowing!

The freezing rain predictions for Dec. 21/22

Dec. 21st, the freezing rain began. The weather radar shows the blue: snow, red: mixed, and green: rain. I went outside yesterday afternoon, it was lovely, but devastating for some. The roads were terrible.

Now look at those without power today.
Toronto Hydro has its own system - they have
hundreds of thousands without power.

Yesterday we had little ice balls on top of the snow!

We have had about 5 cm of snow everyday for several days. Then, ice rain on top of that. I went out to clear the snow off of the spruce trees. I decided to use the snowblower on the driveway before the ice rain began. The little frozen ice balls are pretty! The tree with the Christmas lights looked pretty in the snow. It's nothing like the storm damage nearer to Lake Ontario. The Golden Horseshoe (from Toronto around to Hamilton) was badly hit.