1983: Icy conditions lead to pileups on the Queen Elizabeth Way

The Queen Elizabeth Way – better known as the QEW is the major super highway that runs from Niagara Falls across southern Ontario to Toronto, Canada’s largest city and one the world’s major metropolises. Each day hundreds of thousands of travelers, computers and others travel the highway. On November 26, 1983 a bitter cold airmass had settled in over the region. Lingering moisture held close to the ground from a storm just a few days earlier. Meanwhile a bank of low clouds formed, it was the perfect setup for fog to form. Fog began to appear just as rush hour started. The fog formed a thin layer of moisture that quickly froze, the result was black ice – invisible to drivers at first. Treacherous morning rush hour conditions resulted caused a more than 100-car pile-up and closed the QEW for hours.

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