Friday, January 13, 2012

Another wild weather day

Freezing Rain Warning this morning for Montreal and southern Quebec.

More snow and freezing rain fell on Montreal overnight raising our storm total to around 16cm. Some bursts of snow overnight allowed visibility to drop and the snow to accumulate rather quickly. It remains cold in Montreal and the St. Lawrence Valley as compared to regions south of us. A warm front remains draped over the border keeping the warm air at the surface to our south, but allowing it to stream in aloft, thus the freezing rain. This morning Montreal is -6C while Burlington, Vermont and Plattsburgh are above freezing.

Today will feature a deep upper low moving across the region very close to Montreal. Freezing rain warnings have been posted again for southern Quebec, I really thought the weather warning covered it nicely, but they are the experts. In any event, warning or not that storm will pass to our northeast today and drag a potent cold front across the area. If you have any mixed precipitation in your region it will become all snow by noon and it could be heavy at times before tapering off late tonight. A total of 5cm in the Ottawa Valley with up to 15cm along the St. Lawrence River is likely by tonight. Winds will increase out of the northwest and gust to 60km/h creating widespread blowing snow later today and creating dangerous travel.

Temperatures at -5C currently will nudge close to 0C by mid-morning, before dropping rapidly to -15C overnight and staying there on Saturday.

Kingston, ON - Michael Lea The Whig-Standard
Yesterday's storm dumped as much as 15mm of freezing rain between Kingston and Prescott, Ontario and on the US side between Ogdensburg and Watertown, NY. The ice brought down tree branches on power lines, caused numerous accidents along the 401 and at one time cut power to almost 20,000 homes in Ontario. It was a brief reminder of the strength and danger of ice and the 1998 ice storm.

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