Winter Storm Update

This past weekend over 50cm of snow piled up in the lee of the Great Lakes near London, Ontario. (TWC)

We continue to monitor a nasty weather system that has brought heavy rain and snow to portions of the southern Plains over this past weekend. The storm is expected to merge with a weaker clipper system off the east coast and form quite a strong low pressure area near the Outer Banks. This storm will then lift north into New England.

What this means for Montreal is a good chance of steady precipitation from late Tuesday into late Wednesday night. We could be looking at in excess of 25mm (1 inch) of precipitation in various forms of frozen and liquid. The freezing line will be right through metro Montreal making for a very tricky forecast. The best guess at this time is about 15cm of wet snow split between the start and end of precipitation with about 10mm of rain or freezing rain in between. It will all be blown around by strong winds
of 50km/h in the St. Lawrence Valley.

So far the only mention on this side of the border is a Special Weather Statement by Environment Canada. South of the border in New York and Vermont, winter storm watches have been hoisted. A watch means that there is still considerable uncertainty in the forecast, but prepare and wait until a warning is posted for a more specific geographical region along with amounts and type of precip.

Temperatures are frigid this morning around -13C here in Montreal with wind chill reading to -20C. They will warm to near 0C today along with some light snow from the clipper by tonight. Tuesday will be cloudy as we wait for snow to develop by late in the day. Temperatures will warm to 2 or 3C Wednesday before plummeting again by Thursday.