The overnight snow followed by morning rain created temporary flooding problems across the GTA as blustery winds shredded umbrellas.

To follow up on that, the temperature was expected to drop below freezing. CTV weather anchor Tom Brown warned people to expect a slippery commute on Thursday morning.

In addition, snowsqualls were possible Wednesday night in the Georgian Bay area, he said. Environment Canada issued wind warnings for the counties along the north shore of Lake Erie.

There was the usual amount of weather havoc associated with the winter's first snowfall.

The most serious individual incident occurred in Newmarket, where six people ended up going to hospital on Wednesday for treatment of minor after a delivery truck rear-ended a school bus just after 10 a.m.

That accident occurred at Mulock Drive and Stephen Court. The bus was occupied by members of a group called Rose of Sharon, which provides services to young women. Mothers and their children were on the bus.

For the most part, however, there aren't many serious problems linked to the first winter storm of the season, although there were plenty of minor accidents.

"Blowing snow, ice, rain, pellets, heavy snowfall, throughout the morning, whiteouts -- you name it -- we've had a bit of everything," said Sgt. Dave Woodford, spokesperson for the highway safety division of the Ontario Provincial Police.

The big reason for accidents was drivers not adjusting to conditions, he said. "People seem to think they're indestructible. People do not slow down, they think it's not going to happen to them and they're following vehicles too closely."

Accumulations of about five centimetres of snow were expected for Toronto and its surrounding areas, with greater amounts of snowfall further north. Strong easterly winds of up to 60 kilometres per hour were predicted by Environment Canada.

But relatively early in the morning, the precipitation turned from solid to liquid in the downtown area. Further north, the rain came about 9 a.m. At Buttonville and Pearson airports, the weather stations recorded six and eight centimetres of snow respectively.

Barrie got 8 cm, but CTV Toronto weather anchor Anwar Knight said as one goes north of Barrie, snow accumulations deepen. Further south, St. Catharines experienced a thunderstorm, but lightning flashes were also seen in Toronto.

Along Highway 401 across the top of the city, tractor trailers got stuck in snow banks and were sitting idle on icy on- and off-ramps. A tractor-trailer wiped out on Highway 400 in Vaughan, which blocked all southbound lanes.

According to a notice on the Peel District School Board's website, all buses in Caledon and Dufferin County were cancelled due to bad weather conditions.

The Trillium Lakelands District School Board cancelled buses for schools in Kawartha Lakes, Haliburton and Muskoka, where between 15 and 20 cm of snow was expected to fall.

Further east in Ontario, the snowfall caused school bus cancellations in several counties, including Hastings, Prince Edward, Peterborough, Northumberland, Lennox and Addington and Frontenac.

Around 9 a.m., power was out for nearly 16,000 Hydro One customers in southern Ontario. By 10:30 a.m., that number was down to 5,999.

As of 11 a.m. ET, Environment Canada cancelled a winter storm warning for parts of the GTA, including Toronto and Halton-Peel. In a statement on its website, a winter storm warning was still in effect for York-Durham.  

With a report from CTV Toronto's John Musselman and files from The Canadian Press