1. On this night 66 years ago, a terrible hurricane descended upon Toronto...

2. The storm arrived in the darkness of a Friday night in 1954. It came at the end of a very wet and grey week.

3. They called it Hazel. The hurricane had first been spotted off the coast of South America, and over the course of the week it had been steadily heading north.

4. On Tuesday night, Hurricane Hazel tore through Haiti, killing hundreds.

On Wednesday afternoon, it hit the Bahamas and killed six more.

5. On Friday morning, the storm crashed into the coast of the southern United States. Dozens of Americans died over the course of the day.

6. By dinnertime, as Torontonians arrived home at the end of a soggy commute on the city's brand new subway, Hazel was tearing through Washington, D.C.

7. Toronto wasn't worried. Hazel wasn't supposed to be a threat to our city — we're protected by the Allegheny mountains, which usually break up storms or push them to the east.

8. The last official weather report came at 9:30pm: Toronto would get winds & rain, but nothing like the devastation to the south.

By then, though, the flooding had already started. Hazel *had* crossed the Alleghenies, hit a front of cold Canadian air & stalled above Toronto.

9. All over the city, rivers and creeks began to burst their banks. The Don, the Rouge, Etobicoke Creek, Mimico Creek, Highland Creek…

Even the Garrison, buried in a sewer for nearly a century, sent manhole covers flying atop geysers in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

10. But the worst was the Humber. That night, 150 billion litres of water fell into the river’s watershed — hundreds of tons of rain.

11. The river became a deadly torrent. Roads destroyed. Trees snapped like matchsticks. Cars swept away. Homes ripped from their foundations.

12. And quiet Raymore Drive, near Scarlett & Lawrence, became the scene of unspeakable horrors.

(I should probably mention at this point: some of the following tweets will be pretty upsetting.)

13. An entire block of Raymore Drive had been built at the bottom of the Humber Valley — and now that quiet residential neighbourhood found itself in the middle of the raging river.