So, I get back from two weeks in the sun last Friday thinking “great! winter’s done!”.

Bzzt. Wrong.

Apparently, Mother Nature has seen fit to lob one more (highly unnecessary) winter storm in our direction.

TAF CYOW 111438Z 1115/1212 01012G22KT P6SM SCT140 OVC210
 FM111900 04012G22KT P6SM FEW040 OVC140
 FM120300 07012KT P6SM OVC100
 FM120500 08012G22KT 5SM -SN OVC060
 FM120700 08015G25KT 3/4SM -SN VV008
   PROB40 1210/1212 2SM -PL BR OVC012
 RMK NXT FCST BY 111800Z

Judging by the aviation forecast, the white crap snow is going to start falling around 1am, with a 40% chance of ice pellets in time for the morning commute. Lovely.

(more…)

I set up my GoPro this morning before heading out to work to take pictures at a 1 minute interval until the batteries died. Here’s what they look like after I stitched them together into a time lapse video:

It looks like we’re in for a little an unnecessary amount of snow on Wednesday:

TAF CYOW 270238Z 2703/2724 06012KT P6SM BKN180 OVC200
FM271300 07015G25KT 2SM -SN OVC020
FM271700 07020G30KT 1/2SM -SN BLSN VV005 
  PROB30 2717/2724 3/8SM SN BLSN VV004
RMK NXT FCST BY 270600Z=

And you can already see it on the radar:

Ick.

It’s cold in Ottawa today:

So, I decided to throw a cup of boiling water off my balcony:

The incoming warm front I wrote about earlier can be seen on the edge of the composite radar image for Ontario:

So, I see from the Weather Office’s website that Ottawa is under a freezing rain warning for tomorrow afternoon. Judging by the TAF, it’s not going to arrive until noon, and even then it’s only showing as a 40% probability from noon until 1PM (the end of the forecast period).

TAF CYOW 101738Z 1018/1118 29012KT P6SM FEW040
BECMG 1020/1021 30005KT
FM110000 VRB03KT P6SM SKC
FM111200 09005KT P6SM OVC200
FM111700 10010KT P6SM -RA SCT020 OVC050 PROB40 1117/1118 6SM -FZRA BR BKN020 OVC050
RMK NXT FCST BY 102100Z=

You can see the warm front passing through based on the wind directions in the various periods in the forecast. At the beginning, it’s out of the northwest at 5 knots, becomes variable at 3 knots at 0000Z (7PM) and then is out of the east at 5 knots early tomorrow morning. So, in about 12 hours it flips around almost 180 degrees. Fun.

We’ll get freezing rain if the air being overrun by the incoming warm air is sufficiently cold enough to cause the rain drops condensing at the boundary between the warm and cold air to be supercooled so they freeze instantly on contact.

The next TAF should clarify how long the freezing rain is going to go on for tomorrow, but any way you slice it, it looks like my plans for snowshoeing on Saturday are probably going to be a bust, as you can surmise from the graphic.

I have been looking forward to going snowshoeing this weekend with a bunch of friends for a while now, but having just looked at the long-range forecast for this weekend, I’m not at all confident that’s going to be possible.

As you can see from the graphic I clipped from the Weather Office’s website, there’s probably going to be freezing rain on Friday, which will put a crust on the snow. Then it’s supposed to go up to 11°C on Saturday, which is going to make the snow really sticky, and that sucks when you’re snowshoeing.

Nuts.

And this is going to set the canal back quite a bit, too.

Nuts again.