Our weather has been so boring here lately, I thought I'd post an image showing what heavy snow looks like. This is a photo of a van in Arkona, Ontario buried in over 76 cm of snow that fell during a major snowsquall off Lake Huron Thursday night into Friday morning. (Arkona is located just west of London, Ontario) The snow came down so heavy so fast that numerous motorists were stranded on highways in the area, and emergency officials were forced to use SUVs and snowmobiles to rescue stranded travellers. There were unofficial reports of snow 4-5 FEET deep (120-150 cm) in places. Snowsqualls are a fact of life to the lee of the Great Lakes, but even long time residents in the area say they had never seen so much snow falling in such a short period of time as Thursday night. Given the accumulations, snow was likely falling at 10-15 cm/hr at times during the event. For additional photos on this event, click here and here.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Manitoba snowlovers, look away
Our weather has been so boring here lately, I thought I'd post an image showing what heavy snow looks like. This is a photo of a van in Arkona, Ontario buried in over 76 cm of snow that fell during a major snowsquall off Lake Huron Thursday night into Friday morning. (Arkona is located just west of London, Ontario) The snow came down so heavy so fast that numerous motorists were stranded on highways in the area, and emergency officials were forced to use SUVs and snowmobiles to rescue stranded travellers. There were unofficial reports of snow 4-5 FEET deep (120-150 cm) in places. Snowsqualls are a fact of life to the lee of the Great Lakes, but even long time residents in the area say they had never seen so much snow falling in such a short period of time as Thursday night. Given the accumulations, snow was likely falling at 10-15 cm/hr at times during the event. For additional photos on this event, click here and here.
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Models not showing any significant snow over southern MB through the end of the month! This can easily change, but right now it's not looking good for snowlovers here.
ReplyDeleteWill be interesting to see how mild we get overnight into Sunday. Temperatures are well above freezing in SK and AB, with +8C temperatures in Saskatoon today. Even central AB is still above freezing in the cooler air. We should tap some of that mild air overnight/early Sunday as our winds shift into the west, although the warmest air will be occluding out overnight, and we have an extensive snowpack to our west. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see us near the freezing mark tomorrow morning.
WOW!
ReplyDeleteAmazing Photos !
Rob....how much snow do you think is possible in a single snowstorm that would hit southern Manitoba!
Say would 60 cm be out of the question....Would all the right conditions be possible to come together and give a 60 cm snowfall?????
Didn't we get close to 60cm in that April Colorado Low in 97. It was a lot.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the photos. Arkona is my hometown and I could hardly believe my ears when I heard how much snow Arkona had. I live only 1 1/2 hours away and we only had a few inches! My dad is 86 years old and never remembers so much snow falling in a 24 hour period before.
ReplyDeleteBeing from the area, and actually in it, I can tell you those 4ft plus estimates are in-fact real...
ReplyDeletehere's a good selection of pictures showing it from Arkona - If you can believe it, It actually gets worse the closer you get to Centre Rd in Strathroy - I came in the highway, and it was a MESS... The Lake Huron squalls typically come on shore around Grand Bend and totals arkona/wyoming/forest on a daily basis :)
http://www.30aradio.org/snow.html
ReplyDeleteWhoops, Theres your link!
Thanks for the link to the extra photos! A staggering amount of snow in just 12 hours! I grew up in southern Niagara, and I remember how bad those Great Lake snowsqualls could be. But we never had as much snow as this one!
ReplyDeleteDaniel..
ReplyDeleteThe record single day snowfall over southern MB is 76 cm recorded in Dauphin on Nov 18 1906, and Virden on April 19 1992. The biggest snowfalls in Southern MB are generally associated with major Colorado lows moving over southern MB/NW Ontario, usually early or late in the season when more moisture is available in the northern US to convert into heavy snow over southern MB. In Winnipeg, our heaviest one day snowfall was 38 cm on March 4 1935, (52 cm over 3 days) while we had 48 cm over 4 days with the April 1997 blizzard. Note however that snowdepths can be greatly enhanced by strong winds that can create deep drifts several metres high in the worse cases. It should be noted however that snowstorms here in the Prairies don't get the snowfall rates that can accompany lake effect storms in the Great Lakes, or east coast snowstorms. We simply don't have the vast moisture sources here as they do further east to create those extreme snowfall rates (5-10 cm/hr or more)