Driving Warning – Possible East Coast Snow Friday… Big Sunday?

It’s -5ºC! Brrr… if you thought we had left this winter behind us in December, think again! 🙂 February is going to feel like the winter month that it truly is.

We got down to -5.5ºC this morning. The bright sunshine should get us up to just above freezing so it should feel like a beautiful winter day indeed.  And if you missed the dance last night between the Moon, Mars and Venus, you should be able to catch it again tonight as the sky stays clear.  The same should hold true for Thursday.

Friday Snow – Focused on South/East Island

A weak system moves up from the south on Friday morning.  If the cold air sticks around, which it is expected to, then we have a chance for snow, particularly in the Cowichan Valley and Bowser areas with as much as 5cm (2in) possible on Friday.

Port Alberni is not predicted to receive any snow from this feature on Friday as you can see below.

The main thrust of the snow looks like it will occur between 7-10AM… again, mostly on the South/East parts of the Island.

It should drift northward and linger in the Courtenay/Bowser area toward the afternoon.

Saturday Night/Sunday more interesting?

 

There is still some concern for Sunday.  Yesterday afternoon and this morning’s model run both have pretty significant snowfall across the Island. About double what we will see on Friday.  And it may reach into the Alberni Valley.


That is a pretty dramatic picture.  There are a few dynamics happening with this Saturday system.

#1: The first part on Saturday Evening appears to be coming from the South and West… which should indicate a better chance that we will see snow.

#2: The second part, on Sunday morning then seems to get revved up from the East… affecting the east part of the Island.

This is still a long range, low resolution look at it. So we have to expect that this might overstate things.  And it will also be very temperature dependent as always since we are hovering around freezing.

But it is worth the heads up that Friday, and Sunday may be very bad travel days on some parts of the Island.

Happy Wednesday!

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