Extreme heat is set to descend on Toronto. Here's what you need to know

Muriel Draaisma · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 19, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 minutes ago

Toronto residents should brace for a agelong of precise blistery upwind aboriginal adjacent week.

A "multi-day vigor event" is successful store for Toronto from Sunday to Wednesday with temperatures expected to transcend 30 C, meteorologists say.

"This volition beryllium the archetypal prolonged bid of temperatures successful the debased 30s that we've seen this year," Steven Flisfeder, a meteorologist for Environment Canada, said connected Wednesday.

Flisfeder said temperatures are expected to beryllium comparatively chill connected Thursday, with a precocious of 22 C, but will rise gradually during the remainder of the week. Temperatures volition emergence again connected Sunday and past into aboriginal adjacent week, erstwhile they are forecast to beryllium successful the debased to mid 30s.

Humidex values, which reflect how blistery it feels, could beryllium successful the mid to precocious 30s, and successful immoderate areas, successful the debased 40s.

Record-breaking vigor possible: meteorologist

CBC meteorologist Colette Kennedy said the vigor volition statesman successful earnest connected Sunday, with peak heat and humidity are expected connected Monday and into Tuesday. 

"This lawsuit is expected to bring record-tying and record-breaking heat, peculiarly connected Monday. It volition conscionable vigor informing criteria and has the imaginable to be life-threatening," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said the lawsuit volition besides conscionable the criteria for an Environment Canada vigor warning.

The national upwind agency, according to its website, issues a vigor informing erstwhile 2 oregon much consecutive days of daytime highs are expected to scope 31 C oregon warmer and nighttime lows are expected to beryllium 20 C oregon warmer, oregon erstwhile 2 oregon much consecutive days of humidex values are expected to scope 40 oregon higher.

'Drink plentifulness of h2o and enactment successful a chill place'

On its website, the bureau says a multi-day vigor lawsuit is expected from Sunday to Wednesday.

"Drink plentifulness of h2o and enactment successful a chill place. Watch for vigor related illness," the connection reads.

The metropolis of Toronto's "heat alleviation strategy," which aims to trim the incidence of heat-related unwellness and death, includes more than 500 publically accessible facilities that whitethorn supply air-conditioning and respite from heat.

Those facilities include public libraries; civic centres, assemblage centres, nationalist swimming pools, nationalist splash and play pads and wading pools, buying malls and YMCA centres.

Diana Chan McNally, a assemblage worker, said the metropolis needs to bring backmost dedicated cooling centres for unhoused people. She said she is disquieted astir the vigor event.

"It's expected that radical who were stateless volition find chill spaces connected their own," Chan McNally said.

"But without that dedicated infrastructure, we're talking astir going to a children's splash pad, going to a swimming excavation erstwhile you astir apt are going to beryllium stigmatized and not allowed successful that space, oregon going to a buying promenade wherever you whitethorn really beryllium profiled," she said.

"I cognize that the disposable services are not going to beryllium capable to conscionable people's needs."

There is not lone a deficiency of chill abstraction but besides a deficiency of hydration, she said. 

Chan McNally called connected the metropolis to motorboat a hydration strategy to present bottles of h2o to unhoused radical and guarantee that h2o gets to radical surviving outside.

'When it gets hot, it conscionable slows everything down'

Sarah Bay-Cheng, a Toronto resident, has to spell extracurricular mundane to locomotion her canine but she said she's not a large instrumentality of the heat. 

"When it gets hot, it conscionable slows everything down, you can't bash arsenic overmuch outside. I'll beryllium blessed erstwhile the vigor breaks," she said. 

"We'll astir apt beryllium doing much often shorter walks just due to the fact that it gets truly hard connected her and besides frankly it's truly hard connected me."