Chance of Freezing Rain tonight

I wasn’t going to worry too much about tonight, but Environment Canada has warned of a chance of freezing rain tonight, which is always treacherous.

Freezing rain occurs when rain falls from the sky and freezes on contact with objects and the ground.

We’re currently well below zero, nearly -2C now. The showers and rain that we will be getting tonight, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future is going to be warm. Therefore, the rain will fall from the warmth above, and down into what could be freezing conditions near the ground. A perfect recipe for freezing rain.

Regardless of the possibilities, if you are driving tonight, you should be very aware of this possibility.

The models are pretty adamantly showing that tonights rain is (finally) the start of a trend. December has been very dry so far. We have only received 11mm of rain!. Last year we had received almost 200mm by now. The Average for the month is between 275mm (at the old station on the harbour) and 300mm (at the continuing station at Robertson Creek Hatchery)

Cliff Mass has an excellent entry today explaining why La Nina, while living up to its cold prediction, hasn’t lived up to its usual wetness.

Basically, the center of the big high pressure, which is normal for La Nina and has been giving us our white-sunshine, has been closer to the coast than it usually is… effectively deflecting all the weather systems north, south, and east of us.

It looks like it’s going to pull back in the next week or two, and we should get some of the moisture that we’re used to in a La Nina.