This a forecast snapshot from the HRRR (High Resolution Rapid Refresh) weather model run 24/7 every hour on the hour by NOAA. This model is among one of the highest resolution models currently available and attempts to resolve features as small as individual storms and in the future forecasters hope models like this will even potentially see storm scale features such as tornadoes. The European ECMWF had this storm on the forecast charts for nearly two full weeks and did an excellent job in forecasting it. The complication came as the storm neared fruition because of the position of warm air aloft and the threat of freezing rain. There were substantial questions as to how much snow would fall and where.

This a shot from the King City radar using RadarScope on an android tablet. The storm which was producing substantial amount of snow west of highway 48 was already creating travel troubles. If you know what your looking at you can see bright banding in the radar as ice pellets and other mixed precipitation work in from Halton hills through to the radar site itself. Interestingly a friend of mine on twitter was also posted a response just as I took the screen grab, wise words as conditions deteriorated!

This is the actual surface weather map showing observation and isobars (equal lines of pressure). You'll see the low pressure system is donated at 990mb as the center of the low passes over central Lake Erie.

As the storm continued to pull northeast bringing rain and freezing rain to much of Eastern Ontario and parts of Quebec, a large swatch of snowfall from 10 - 35 centimeters was found from Toronto westward. This fresh and loose snow would be the main driving force for the coming ground blizzard conditions. You can also see the low pressure center is now down to 985mb dropping at such a quick rate it constitutes a weather bomb. If you look towards the left side of the map you'll not e ground temperatures become progressively colder from Michigan westward into Wisconsin and Minnesota with -30's appearing regularly.

This map is showing the morning of January 7th just before sunrise. You can see the -20's have worked their way well into Southern and Eastern Ontario. Heavy squalls were also pounding areas inland from the great lakes as lake effect snow squalls developed in the cold and deeply unstable air. These extremely cold temperatures and bitter winds gusting as high as 70km/h are something that is usually contained to the Canadian Prairies and rarely seen in Southern Ontario.

Interesting to note, because of the direction of the winds (southwesterly flow) and the coldest air originating to the west as opposed to north-east, the models showed the coldest air in southern areas such as Windsor, London and Toronto rather than areas to the north which are traditionally cooler.

Here is a map courtesy of MesoWest (Utah) showing wind direction, average speed and temperature. My home weather station is the one that shows up beside Vaughan at a bone chilling -25C. It's no surprise I broke a personal all time windchill record at my home with my station reporting a windchill of -37.1 °C / -34.8 °F at 7:51AM. That's darn cold!

Mount Forest was even colder than my home and it was the nearest station to where I was in Dufferin County (only off by 100km). Windchill values from this station were around -41C.

But not to be outdone, what Southern Ontario was seeing was just a glancing blow compared to what the storm was doing to Iqaluit some 2337 km to my north. In fact, shortly after I took this wind gusts of 141 km/h were reported! Now that's incredible.

Back to Southern Ontario, highway 10 during the evening of the 6th and 7th was a mess! I hit a patch of ice and caught a snow bank. My friend Jason was kind enough to give me a quick tow, otherwise I would have been busy shoveling for a while!