Don't be too greedy!

Despite the continued juggling by the models today, I grew a lot more confident with how this storm will turn out. As you can see above, here is the 1st amount map of our winter season :)

Surprise Flakes?

A quick Alberta Clipper will drop down into Southern Ontario tonight. It will be mainly cold rain with a some flurries likely on the backside. However, there could be a quick changeover overnight into early morning. If the cold front arrives before a band of precip could, don't be surprised to see a couple of centimeters of snow on the ground tomorrow morning around the Golden Horseshoe as well as Southwestern Ontario. This will finally trigger the lakes a little. Northwest wind should bring 3-5 centimeters of snow to many areas of the Snowbelt.

The Storm

Most of you must be wondering why my forecast amount seems so little whereas the models seemed to interpret a lot more snow. Let me have a few explanations before you start becoming upset with me.

Currently, I am eyeing the west of Apps track right now. Today, most of the models shifted west as was expected. I expect the final track to be something between the Euro and Canadian model as indicated on yesterday’s map.

Like I mentioned yesterday, the concern with this storm is definitely the lack of cold air and when/where will the jets phase for this storm. Unfortunately, with the way things seemed to look right now, it is definitely not in our favour.

One thing I learned last winter is NEVER try interpreting snowfall amounts from particular model runs, especially looking those nice little “snow on ground maps” that some sites have for the models. They are usually never accurate and tend to underestimate the surface heating. Even if things were to occur as say, the 12z GFS indicates, it will definitely not be the 8 inches of snow. The surface temperature is 3-5 Celsius during most of the time period, which is impossible for pure accumulating snow to occur. Instead, what we will have is a long period of rain/wet snow mix with one or two inches on the backside.

With two years of experience under my belt, I think I am getting much better at extrapolating based on the characteristics of the model runs as well as the present meteorological factors. However, this is no where near my final call yet and a very small factor could change the dynamics of things. Right now I am confident with the track, but not yet settled with the other variables.