Posts Tagged: snow
April 1st 2013
On July 19, 2016
- 2013 Storm Chases
Surface analysis 21Z Mon Apr 1 2013
Looking at this photo it sure does not look like April 1st, and no this is not an April fool's joke I've concocted, it's a not a joke at all!
Mother nature decided that we've not had enough winter this year and it seems even with balmy days between they are simply teasers.
(There has been no Photoshop work done to this photo, it was taken purely using a Cokin graduated tobacco coloured filter)
My car (not visible but right of the frame) was actually partially blocking a lane. It was all fine and dandy since there was no traffic and this snow was low drifting stuff.
Then just as a few cars came into view the wind started blasting and the drifting snow became a low visible wall of white a few feet tall. It was more than tall enough to shroud my car from any unsuspecting drivers so I made haste and got out of here as quickly as I could!
I'm not sure if the municipalities or province for that matter still has any salt in reserves. Whatever the case, this highway was just glazed over! I almost wiped out just stepping foot outside of my car!
April 1st huh? Sure feels like I'm north of the Arctic Circle, not north of Orangeville.
This is the 0 visibility stuff blowing where I was parked.
Yeah, not a good idea!
There were tons of little snow devils (vorticity pockets known correctly as eddies) dancing around in the fields. Unfortunately, what looked cool to my eye looked like crap to my camera.
But for the record, you can see the winds and squalls made things nasty in these exposed places.
Here are some of the cellular convective snow squalls heading southeast into the Greater Toronto Area (I'm looking southwest).
Some of the tops on these squalls must have been pretty high but I did not see any lightning returns on any of my services.
(Again no Photoshop, just that Cokin Tobacco filter)
Yeah, the car was clean! I decided after the fact this was a bad idea, seeing as I was actually getting dirty!
Note to self, don't unnecessarily go out of the way to drive through snow squalls when the car is clean!
No rainbows here, but the convective lake effect snow bands were so cellular in nature that you could literally be under a clear sky above while all around you snow is pouring down.
Just to illustrate the point.
This was highway 10 just north of Mono, as you can see this looks it typically does in the period between late November and early March.
It sure is cruel to have it look like this in April, it's simply not funny!
April 4th 2016
On April 10, 2016
- 2016 Storm Chases
You know, when late March rolls around most people are over the winter and this was no different, except 10 to potentially 15cm was in the works and it was April! The snow started coming down hard late Sunday afternoon and continued overnight.
I snapped this with my phone in the windshield cradle. Roads were among the worst they'd been all winter with the lack of snow earlier in the season.
It amazing, just a few days prior temperatures had been soaring into the near 20's and less than a week later we were bottoming out in the sub-zero range.
The "spring" warmup had some resturants deploy their patio gear early. I'm not sure if this was an intential strike by nature to push the patitio goers back inside?
Well.. it was a good idea to put the patio gear out last week!
All in all about 12cm coated the streets of Toronto and many of the northern suburbs.
Yeah, good thing I wore my boots!
Seriously, this was the most winterlike I have seen Toronto all season!
Soon it won't be snow but mud I'm going to be dodging. Anyway, as a Canadian there's one thing for certain... spring dosen't start until the end of April and that's a given!
October 17th 2015
On October 21, 2015
- 2015 Storm Chases
October is notorious in Southern Ontario for wild swings in weather and the third weekend of October proved to be one of those wild rides. Just a week earlier I was celebrating Thanksgiving in a t-shirt and shorts with temperatures of 24C but that warm spell was crushed as cold polar air moved in the following Thursday, and even colder air flooded in Friday evening setting the stage for strong snow squalls Saturday morning.
By 8PM Friday a well organized lake effect rain squall was pushing inland from Georgian Bay and I figured that I would prepare myself for what would likely be an interesting Saturday morning.
Just an hour earlier snow squall watches were replaced with warnings. Some forecast models such as the WRF-NAM, HRRR and HRDPS were plopping almost a foot of snow in the highlands between Blue Mountain and Feversham. I figured the amounts were high since typically, most October snow melts on contact with the warm ground and air temperatures usually don't hang below freezing for any length of time. Plus, the lakes are still very warm and really moderate any cold air masses.
I got up relatively early Saturday morning and headed out the door around 9:30AM. There was a large sustained squall exactly as forecast. I really had no idea how much snow was falling since webcams in this area are sparse and squalls can be very local. Needless to say a cold sunny morning turned into a cloudy snowy morning near Honeywood.
I stopped in Honeywood to grab a few photos. This was the first significant snow I encountered and accumulations ranged from 1cm to about 5cm locally. The roads were mainly bare and wet with the odd slushy section. Nothing my rear wheel drive car with summer tires couldn't handle.
I really lucked out, mother nature timed the snow squalls almost perfectly to coincide with the peak of the fall colours. The trees looked beautiful and the white blank landscape was very strange.
This was the first really colourful wood lot in the snowy landscape that I happened to come across. I made sure to get a series of photos. I was worried the weight of the snow and wind the previous day would have stripped the leaves farther to my northwest and did not want to forgo any potential photos along the way.
I slowly drove up the road looking for some interesting subject matter when the sun suddenly popped out. I literally jerked the car onto the shoulder and was already stepping out before I had fully stopped. These windows of sunlight don't last long, you're literally dealing with a few seconds if that!
The only thing that would have been cooler would have been a blue sky!
I slowly drove deeper into the squall and eventually ran into treacherous roads near Singhampton! Cars were in the ditch, visibility was a couple hundred meters, there was hard paked ice and the temperature was zero! Yikes, way worse than what I had expected! My tire tracks revel the depth of the snow here, you can see it's a good 5-7cm deep.
The heavy snow under the squall reduced visibility so much that anything more than 20 or 30 meters away became washed out. It was not a good spot for photos, but I did find this cool building with an old horse and buggy car in Rob Roy.
This was the scene just a few hundred meters down the road from the horse and buggy house. Looking at these pine trees it sure felt like December!
Believe it or not there was a solid 10-12cm of snow covering everything! That's a heck of a lot of snow for October, especially given how wet it was
At this point I paused for thought. While the snow was cool, it was simply obscuring visibility far too much. The colour in the landscape was lost and believe me, I'll have months to photograph snow. I decided to push west to get to the edge of squall where the snow would stop.
After looking at the radar and visible satellite I decided to head southwest. It was my best bet for clearing and even some blue sky. This photo was taken in Ice River Springs at 10th Concession and Highway 2. You can see the sun was poking through the squall.
Just as I was about to escape the squall another wave of snow closed in darkening the sky and coating the landscape. So I did all I could and kept heading west.
Suddenly the sun came out again just west of Feversham near Lady Bank. While navigating through the squall I was also looking at Google Maps satellite images to find forested areas. Flat farm land is good for storm chasing but not very good for fall foliage.
Presto! What I was looking for finally happened, the squall cleared and sun came out. It was very surreal to have blue sky, convective cumulus, snow flakes and fall foliage. The temperature also jumped up to what felt like 7 degrees.
I quickly snapped photos where I could before the squall closed in again. I realized the snow on the trees was melting quickly so it was indeed warmer and very surreal.
I finally found the colour contrast I was looking for.
