Saturday, May 14, 2011

More rain & flooding

A stubborn slow moving area of low pressure will slowly lift along the jet stream from the Ohio Valley towards Lake Ontario. This system will meander along a stationary frontal boundary and basically remain over our area all week. The forecast is simple, what you see outside is what you get. Periods of rain have developed and will remain with us right into the middle of the work week. There will be bands of heavier rainfall as moisture surges into the area and even a stray thunderstorm or two today. Already about 15mm of rain has fallen overnight. We are expecting totals by Wednesday to be in the 50-75mm range. This is raising concerns once again across the Lake Champlain and Richelieu River basins. Flooding is still occurring and all this water will act to stabilize the lowering flood waters or even increase flows again into the lake. Flood Watches are in effect region wide this morning across southern Quebec and into New York and Vermont. Heavy rain fall warnings have also been posted for southern Quebec west into the St. Lawrence Valley of eastern Ontario.

Temperatures were very warm yesterday under hazy sunshine, reaching 25C in Montreal, one of the warmest days this year. Today is a very different story as we are currently only 11C. Temperatures will stay chilly into the middle of next week. As strong northeast winds develop Monday, from 30-50km/h, we may even drop into the single digits for highs, perhaps 5 to 8C a full 10-15 degrees below normal. It will only clear out and slowly warm up by next Friday.

No comments: