Dreary but mild week ahead for Montreal & Ottawa

The storminess has shifted to the west coast of North America with heavy rain and snow as well as very strong winds and coastal flooding from B.C. to California. The dramatic photo above is from Mission Terrace, California. The storms have killed three in California producing flooding, landslides, power outages and massive transport delays. (Photo via Twitter, CANOE.ca)

Low clouds and fog and in some cases freezing drizzle continue to prevail across eastern Ontario and southern Quebec this morning. It is quite mild at -2C with very little movement in temperature over the entire weekend. Low pressure that brought us our first big snow last week is now located well east of the region over the Atlantic. High pressure has been trying to clear skies out since Saturday but to no avail. Moisture trapped at the surface has created a temperature inversion and left us with solid cloud cover. Sadly the clouds will hang on until the arrival of the next weather system, so it does not look good for any sunshine. Temperatures will be mild in Montreal for the next several days, near 0C (32F) today and Tuesday and above freezing to 2C (36F) on Wednesday. Low pressure will move very near the St. Lawrence Valley on Wednesday with a period of rain or mixed precipitation before changing to snow Wednesday night.  This is not a big storm, so amounts will be on the light side. It nevertheless will make for some slippery driving mid week. Temperatures will trend colder by the end of the week but no real arctic air is forecast until after Christmas.