Much colder weather pattern

Some major changes are in store for our weather over the next week or so. It begins today with the showers that are falling in the St. Lawrence Valley. They are very narrow band and associated with an arctic front. The precipitation should end before noon with much colder air moving into the region. Winds will increase out of the west and gust to 50km/h. We have reached our high for the day and temperatures should remain steady around 7C before dropping close to 0C tonight. Any precipitation should taper off by lunch as mentioned with just a few flurries possible into the evening hours and again on Friday. It looks like the cool weather will be here right into next week.

On the west coast strong low pressure will move into BC over the weekend with heavy rain and very strong winds and eventually into southern Alberta. As the storm moves east much colder air will poor into the Rockies and prairies with snow possible next week.

In the tropics tropical depression 19 has formed and is located 260km south southeast of Grand Cayman Island. The storm is forecast to become tropical storm Richard later today before moving towards the Yucatan. Forecasters expect Richard to become a hurricane and move over or close to the Yucatan over the weekend before emerging in the southern Gulf of Mexico by early next week. After that it may threaten the US Gulf Coast, but we are several days away from determining that. Computer models this far out have the storm moving in every possible direction.


NOAA Image of TD 19 this morning. An aircraft is forecast to fly into the storm later today, and Richard is expected to be named .