Canadian Autumn/winter Thread

[Coopsy]

I hope so

All farily quiet for the moment, after record snowfalls in London...Ontario, of almost a metre of snow, the great lakes region is going to be quiet, as is the praires. No real cold around for the next few days.

Watch for quite a potent storm to hit the BC coast by the start of the week, lots of rain for the coast and snow for the mountain passes, snow levels dropping to about 1500 metres

[WhiteFox]

I hope so

All farily quiet for the moment, after record snowfalls in London...Ontario, of almost a metre of snow, the great lakes region is going to be quiet, as is the praires. No real cold around for the next few days.

Watch for quite a potent storm to hit the BC coast by the start of the week, lots of rain for the coast and snow for the mountain passes, snow levels dropping to about 1500 metres

The Weather Channel described this week's weather as 'zonal'. Shows up pretty well on the temperature charts: clear straight lines running West to East going from warmer in the South to Colder to the North. Nothing particularly cold in the US this week other than snow in the mountains and snow in the UP of Michigan/Northern Minnesota which is about as unusual as a non-white Christmas in Britain!

[Coopsy]

Forecast today for Canmore was sun and 6oC....current conditions, heavy snow, poor visibility. Current radar:

http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=XSM

[MAF]

theres quite a few purple echoes there Rich. must be good to see it coming down so heavy

[Coopsy]

It sure is, some real heavy showers coming down atm, about an inch or so an hour, but the purples I think are errors on the radar as that would indicate 20cm's per hour snowfall. Its quite warm so its the thick heavy snow, unusual for this area...great skiing conditions for the hills though

[angela lynne]

pics please rich.its nice to look at

[Coopsy]

I cant at the mo, at work but will try at lunch

[Coopsy]

Update 12:30pm...reports of 6 inches (15cm's) at Banff in 3 hours, not sure about that personally I think it was an exaggeration on the persons behalf

Here in Canmore probably between 1 and 2 inches have fallen in 3 hours, snow has stopped now ...temps around freezing, nice suprise

[Coopsy]

The unusually warm winter for many parts of Canada continues, with the great lakes looking set for a great weekend for yard work, if any needs to be done

BC has just been hit by its 3rd storm of the week, this one being the most destructive with sustained winds around 62.5 mph for a while around Vancouver and V Island.

Extremely heavy snows to the interior mountain passes and even the Valleys of BC at times, with upto 60cm (2 feet) in places

The prairies look set to get some snow and freezing rain today and into tomorrow before a high presure cell builds and calms things down

Forecastors were spot on here in Canmore as they predicted 1-3 cm of snow overnight, we actually received 2.5 cm (1 inch)

[Roger J Smith]

After several rather typical December storms earlier this week, we have just had a very severe windstorm around Vancouver and Victoria BC, as well as most of Washington state. A 974mb low came in last night pretty much right over top of Vancouver, with a sharp cold front passing at 0300h Pacific time. Winds gusted to 60mph all over the region, and up to 90 mph in exposed locations. Thousands of trees down, hydro-electric power out for as many as half a million people counting 350,000 south of the border.

Nothing much happened at my place, we tend to be sheltered from strong winds by a nearby grove of huge trees covering 2 or 3 acres, so luckily no damage right around here.

The storm was expected and because it came through at such an early hour almost nobody was on the roads, had it come through at rush hour there would have been a real nightmarewith somany trees falling across roads and traffic lights going on the blink (some were blown around so badly that you couldn't tell which part of the intersection they were facing).

Later in the day (Friday) it cleared up and now we're expecting 2-3cm of wet snow on Saturday. Mountain highways in southern BC generally closed today, Whistler resort north of here had 60 cm of snow.

This is probably the worst windstorm to hit the region since October, 1962 on a large scale, although I've seen stronger winds locally a few times. That storm in 1962 was a freak hurricane from near Hawaii (Freda) which followed a similar track to last night's storm, and held together with 150km/hr winds. In that storm, known as the Columbus Day storm in Washington state, many thousands of large trees were blown down including many of the same areas hit hard last night, such as Vancouver's famous Stanley Park area. Four deaths reported in this storm from the Seattle area where winds were even stronger than here.

[Blackie]

Sounds as though it was pretty nasty, Roger. Good to hear that it happened when not many people were up and about, but I can just imagine the devastation with all those beautiful trees uprooted.

Which areas have been worst affected around your area? And how did Vancouver Island fare?

[Coopsy]

Here is a good link Blackie for info on the storm

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/index.html

[Blackie]

Thanks Rich. Very descriptive but little real detail. It sounds like it was bad, though. Did you get the effects of it in the Rockies?

[Roger J Smith]

Blackie, the worst of the wind damage was in two main areas, the first being Victoria which is at the southeast end of the Island, and the other area hard hit was generally around the length of Burrard Inlet which you can see on the map as a long east-west inlet that runs north of the city, towards Port Moody and Coquitlam. It seems that the winds aligned perfectly with this inlet and gusts to 75 mph were recorded at the lighthouse near the harbour entrance. Where I live there was very little damage, but in my travels yesterday I saw quite a bit of minor damage in Richmond, which is a large flat area south of the city and where the airport is located. For instance, I saw a large air-conditioning unit lying in the middle of a parking lot, blown off the top of a building-- once again, lucky this happened at 0400 or so, the place was deserted. I had an odd feeling when I saw this, because on 26 Jan 1978 I saw the exact same thing in Toronto, although that time the metal came down at 0745 about a minute before I arrived for work, and landed more or less where I usually parked my car.

As for the damage in Victoria, it is particularly bad from the downtown area west along the shoreline to Sooke and Jordan River, an area where the trees are quite massive in general (we have trees around here that grow to 60-80 metres in height, although the trees that come down in these storms are often smaller than those giants which have probably lived through dozens of storms like this).

We got the 2-3 cm snow I was talking about earlier today, it is rather slushy and melting slowly now.

[Coopsy]

Thanks Rich. Very descriptive but little real detail. It sounds like it was bad, though. Did you get the effects of it in the Rockies?

We didnt get any effect of it here, guess the mountains protected it for us, which is lucky

[Coopsy]

Stewart, BC has reportedly had 5 feet of snow in 5 days, I am lookng for a link on the internet to this news/pictures. If anyone finds one please post it here

Annual snowfall is 25 feet so not suprising I guess

[Roger J Smith]

Since I posted a week ago, we've gained a clearer reporting on the actual damage in Stanley Park which is just to the northwest of downtown Vancouver. Apparently hundreds of large trees were blown down across roads and hiking trails in the park, and they expect to have the west-facing side of the park closed for the whole winter with commercial loggers coming in to remove the valuable timber that otherwise would never have been cut down.

Meanwhile, local arborists are saying that in residential areas, a lot of the damage comes because of a practice widespread in suburban parts of the city, known as tree crowning, where various parts of trees have been removed (usually 30-40 years ago) to improve the view. This apparently made these large trees more unstable in high winds and thus a lot of them came down in this particularly vicious windstorm.

We're expecting another strong wind through here later "today" in your time, or tomorrow morning local time. This time winds will be SSE to SW through the event, 40-60 mph. Not quite as intense, but combined with the new moon high tides, some coastal flooding problems are expected in a few spots close to the U.S. border and in the Gulf Islands west of the city.

[Blackie]

Stewart, BC has reportedly had 5 feet of snow in 5 days, I am lookng for a link on the internet to this news/pictures. If anyone finds one please post it here

Annual snowfall is 25 feet so not suprising I guess

I came across this link, cc: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/sto...c0-79a6919b6d9e. That's bound to make a few people on here very envious :lol:

Shame to hear about those beautiful old trees in Stanley Park, Roger. That's one of my favourite parts of Vancouver. It must have taken the brunt of the winds.

[Coopsy]

As a pacific storm comes ashore around southern vancouver, the track is to pass through the Kootneys and onto south Alberta. Winter storm watch for southern Alberta (which includes my location). This is set for tomorrow (Wednesday). I will keep you posted as to the outcome

[Coopsy]

Heavy snow has started here, 2 inches in 2 hours, snow forecast to last all day, possibly 8-10 inches by the end of the day if upsloping kicks in

I will kep you posted, with pictures

[Coopsy]

6 inches of snow in 6 hours now, no signs of slowing, upsloping now kicking in so maybe another 6 inches by tomorrow

[Coopsy]

Having just watched an indepth look at the forthcoming Canadian winter on the Weather Channel, the experts seem to believe that an Artic High will be positioning itself over Canada in the next week or so, spreading the cold air over much of Canada, especially the maritimes, including the great lakes, and down into New York and the Eastern Seaboard.

Now they seem to think this could be inplace until late February. Could be interesting as it appears the winter proper is upon us. Not sure what effect this could have on the UK as the northern arm of the jet looks set to take a dive over much of North America.

[Roger J Smith]

C-coops, if you're on here this evening (Tuesday local time), look out, there's a vicious storm brewing across the region, here's the details as I posted elsewhere:

988 mb low tracking ESE from near Kamloops in central BC towards Regina SK by morning and south of Winnipeg MB by evening Wednesday will bring a severe blizzard 15-30 cm snow and -20 C or lower temps, -40 C wind chills, to much of the prairies tomorrow (later today UK time). Temporary chinook conditions in warm sector will shield southern Alberta from the first part of the storm but all regions will be into the deep freeze by afternoon.

Vancouver had yet another damaging wind storm this afternoon as a cold front dropped temps from 10 C at 2 pm to 1 C at 5 pm (winds were WNW 70-100 km/hr). More large trees came down in this storm, which the local media say is the 14th storm of the winter season, although probably the fifth or sixth major wind event. Interior valleys now being blasted by strong channeled W to NNW winds and mountain highways being closed by avalanche or blowing snow hazards.

Very strong arctic high over the Yukon chilling down to -45 C next few days, and this air mass is moving south to cover all of western Canada (it modifies to near -8 C where I am) for the rest of the week and into the weekend. Very gusty winds behind the cold front of this storm should rip through Canmore about midnight to 0200 and Calgary about 0300 local time, add seven for GMT.

Expecting the worst snowstorm conditions to be in central AB-SK southeast to southern MB with some nasty freezing rain in areas between Calgary and Edmonton tonight.

[WhiteFox]

Very strong arctic high over the Yukon chilling down to -45 C next few days, and this air mass is moving south to cover all of western Canada (it modifies to near -8 C where I am) for the rest of the week and into the weekend. Very gusty winds behind the cold front of this storm should rip through Canmore about midnight to 0200 and Calgary about 0300 local time, add seven for GMT.

The first signs of the cold shot heading for the High plains of the US and then Eastward...

Thanks for the report Roger. Interesting, if dangerous, conditions ahead.

[Coopsy]

The conditions deteriorated last night at approx 6pm, with snowfall coming in accompanied by strong winds. The temp however was a warm minus 1oC so the snow was thick and wet, unusual for these parts. This continued into the night and as the colder artic air slipped south, the snow turned more grainy.

Today has been brutal, temps now down to minus 16oC (daytime high) with extremely strong winds and horizontal snow that has unabated all day, even though the snow itself wasnt forecast?? Winchill currently at a bone chilling minus 28oC but conditions are slowly improving

Many accidents about as the wetness of the snow last night has created thick ice that has been covered by the snow causing horrendous driving conditions.

Possibly the worst conditions I have seen since being here.