Saturday, February 26, 2011

More precipitation on the way

Burlington, Vermont is having one of its snowiest February's ever.
(Glenn Russell, Burlington Free Press)

By now most of you know that Friday's forecast was another complete miss for us weather people. It happens. When you get into the business of trying to predict weather, you develop broad shoulders. So what happened to the storm? Why is it too cold? Why is it too warm? Etc Etc. I have heard it all over my 25 plus years reporting and recording weather. This week was particularly challenging with a bad week at work and a bad week in the weather department.

The system yesterday passed along the New York/Pennsylvania border keeping the bulk of the heavy snow across New York and Vermont. While Montreal had only 3-5cm or about 2 inches, Burlington, Vermont recorded almost 25cm (10"). That snowfall brings Burlington ever so close to the snowiest February on record, a mark that was established at 42.3" in 2008. To date just over 40" has fallen on that city, and with more forecast tonight and Sunday, the record should be surpassed.

Today temperatures are cold across the region with -13C here on L'ile Perrot. It will be dry today with clouds increasing this afternoon and a cold high of -5C. A weak clipper system will giver 2-5cm of snow across the region overnight before some brief clearing on Sunday. That will be the appetizer for a much stronger storm from the southern plains moving towards our region for Monday. At this time the storm will pass very close to Montreal with lots of moisture and milder temperatures. Around one inch of precipitation is expected in the form of a snow/rain mix. Exact quantities and timing of the precipitation are yet to be determined. After the bad stretch of predictions, lets sleep one more night on this one!

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