Massive Winter Storm

AccuWeather Radar

I am not sure where to begin on this first day of February so lets just start close to home. This is a developing weather event, so I expect the amounts of forecast snow for Montreal to change by the end of the day. Low pressure continues to organize over the southern plain states. Meanwhile energy out ahead of the main storm is producing a swath of light snow across the lower lakes and into New York state. The radar image above shows this event well with the two areas of precipitation. Today Montreal and the region will see some of that light snow, but it will not amount to more than a few centimetres. The main action will arrive overnight and Wednesday. At this time expect snow and blowing snow to develop by daybreak tomorrow and last all day. The snow will be steady in Montreal, but the heaviest snow will remain south of the city. The official forecast is for 10cm in Montreal with 10-15cm across eastern Ontario and 20cm plus across the border in New York. The snow will be accompanied by strong northeast winds in Montreal to 50km/h and biting cold with wind chill in the minus 20's. At this time I am awaiting the updated warnings but it looks like Winter Storm Warnings for southern Ontario, where Toronto could see 30cm and New England/New York, with a Winter Storm Watch for eastern Ontario including the National Capital Region and Cornwall. Southern Quebec at this time has no warnings, surprisingly not even a watch. Rest assured it will be a nasty travel day everywhere tomorrow. This is an intense low pressure area with snowfall rates of an inch an hour and even thunder and lightning with the snow not out of the question in the warned areas.

This storm is far reaching with a swath of heavy snow into Chicago and south of that an ice event that could last more than 12 hours with a half inch of ice. This would be disabling for central Indiana east into Pennsylvania. We will see major travel delays across the eastern half of the Continent today into Thursday. Already hundreds of flights have been cancelled ahead of the storm.

I will update this story as often as I can today.