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Canada Winter 2015-2016 discussion


Ottawa Blizzard

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About 8cm here in my area since this storm started. First storm of the season and its about time. Seeing a mixture of ice pellets and snow atm. Had a bit of freezing rain earlier and this made the snow pack a bit heavier than usual to shovel.  

 

Be safe guys! Great to see everyone. 

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This is an unique and cool Ice Pellet storm. The winds are very high and sounds loud and ominous. I've never experienced one lasting this long. I was driving on some in-town roads during the heavy part of it and I've never had the opportunity to see what its like. Its nuts, you may as well be driving on sand and I had very little control and breaking with winter tires on was terrible! Tires were spinning in place even gradually putting on the gas. I can't imagine traveling on highways in that, couldn't pay me to. The salters and plows couldn't keep up.

 

The current gradient is 0ºC on the lakeshore like Goderich while Owen Sound and Mount Forest are about -6ºC.

 

Especially since people in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan said it was one of the best sleet storms they have seen. 

 

Its certainly the best one I've ever seen, its awesome. If it was even heavier and had some loud thunder that would be perfect.

 

Been ice pellets here for hours and hours after initial push of snow and blowing snow. Saw a report of 10cm of ice pellets in Elmira.

 

That's similar to what I have (closer to 7 cm of pellets). It was blowing snow briefly before the IP onslaught began and continues.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm getting incredibly heavy snowfall right now (4 inch per hour rate easy), pretty much right at the top of rates I've seen. It started getting dark when I was in a room and then shortly after the fun began. 3:35 pm was the heaviest. Snowflake size wasn't even all that larger than normal too which makes the dense nature of it very impressive. Wind not that high. Visibility was 50 meters!! And I thought yesterday around 1:28 pm the snow was heavy (former heaviest of the winter so far), this is easily in the Top 4 of the decade. Then at 3:48 pm the wind started picking up big time and the flake size decreased. I wish they were monster flakes because the scene would have been insane. Now the wind is picking up to the point where you can barely see anything outside at all, insane winter conditions. This is extreme to the point where I'm getting excited and its one of the few winter states that does.

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I'm basically getting full blown blizzard conditions, holy crap!!!!!! I can't imagine what its like outside of town, in-town I can't see anything...

 

I went out into the historic conditions and experienced 60 km/h winds and saw the flake size increase, with that the visibility went down at certain moments to 10 feet  :o and for 5-10 minutes it was 20 meters. I actually could see how dangerous sustained conditions like that really is, I would not want to be in an unfamiliar environment or caught away from shelter at all. I was just covered in snow just being out for a 50 second period. To the south all the windows are totally covered in snow. If any buses or vehicles were out on the road (no idea if schools were in session today) they would no doubt have to turn around or somehow pull off to the side of the road.

 

3:30 - 4:00 pm today was one of the most intense winter weather conditions I've ever seen, right there next to January 6, 2014 and that snow wall of February 27 of the same year.

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I'm getting incredibly heavy snowfall right now (4 inch per hour rate easy), pretty much right at the top of rates I've seen. It started getting dark when I was in a room and then shortly after the fun began. 3:35 pm was the heaviest. Snowflake size wasn't even all that larger than normal too which makes the dense nature of it very impressive. Wind not that high. Visibility was 50 meters!! And I thought yesterday around 1:28 pm the snow was heavy (former heaviest of the winter so far), this is easily in the Top 4 of the decade. Then at 3:48 pm the wind started picking up big time and the flake size decreased. I wish they were monster flakes because the scene would have been insane. Now the wind is picking up to the point where you can barely see anything outside at all, insane winter conditions. This is extreme to the point where I'm getting excited and its one of the few winter states that does.

 

Congrats. I don't think I've ever seen anything much greater than 2/hr for any sustained period of time. Good time to be in the belts. :)

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Congrats. I don't think I've ever seen anything much greater than 2/hr for any sustained period of time. Good time to be in the belts. :)

 

It was so shocking that if I were in a big city that doesn't get intense activity very much and knew what was coming, it would be worth it to travel 3 hours and sit somewhere in the path of the LES wall and experience winter insanity. It was only 30 minutes and came in so suddenly but its wet dream grade goodness. So good that I hate winter and I was losing my mind at what was happening outside the window; I was cussing out loud to myself.

 

People who had their driveways cleared in the afternoon had all the snow blown right back in, in that 30 minute span.

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I didn't think I'd see it again, but another awesome blast came through at 8:28 pm and lasted 10 minutes or so. It was a Top 4 of all time intensity on the same day as what just happened, what a gift. It had some of the sheer ferocity from what 3:45 pm provided. It is now clear skies here for the moment. It was a consolidating mega band that is ripping through a chunk of SON. Users in Toronto might get a taste of the crazyness, so be glued to your windows in short order.

 

I can't believe it happened yet again at 12:18 am, it wasn't as strong as the first two but still in my Top 10 most intense winter weather scenes or experiences. That's 3 in the Top 10 instances in less than 12 hours, what a day. It lasted 10 minutes as well and there wasn't as much wind either which helps make it chaotic.

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Not including today's snowfall, downtown Toronto has seen only 16.4 cm (6.5") of snow to date for this winter season. Pearson Airport/YYZ is worse, only at 10.6 cm (4.2"). Despite this, today's 12z Euro and GFS models have some snowfall next week.

 

Glad to see the downtown station filled in that missing data. Wasn't sure that would happen (see December 2011) so I have my sig displaying the North York data. I might switch it over...but the NY numbers are usually the least depressing. :lol:

 

Futility numbers, especially at Pearson, are in play. 3rd time in 7 winters. Amazingly brutal stretch.

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Glad to see the downtown station filled in that missing data. Wasn't sure that would happen (see December 2011) so I have my sig displaying the North York data. I might switch it over...but the NY numbers are usually the least depressing. :lol:

 

Futility numbers, especially at Pearson, are in play. 3rd time in 7 winters. Amazingly brutal stretch.

Yea brutality mixed with decent winters in there. Still early tho and February could be interesting maybe.

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True...but the lows have been lower than the highs have been high. February has been kind to us the last decade. Hopefully that'll continue.

Yea but I think it's a lot of bad luck to be honest when it comes to potentially staring at 3 least snowiest winters on record in the last 7 years. And also the strong El Niño this year isn't helping the matter.

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Yea but I think it's a lot of bad luck to be honest when it comes to potentially staring at 3 least snowiest winters on record in the last 7 years. And also the strong El Niño this year isn't helping the matter.

Joe Bastardi is making reference today to January 1966 and how that month saw two big storms. One, on January 23, buried Toronto in one of its biggest ever snowstorms. The second, on January 30-31, 1966 buried Ottawa and Montreal. The winter of 1965-66 was apparently a strong El Nino year.

 

There look to be two big storms over the next week and a half although, at the moment, both look to completely miss Toronto.

 

Like 2009-2010, this looks as though it could be a futility winter.

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