UPDATE 2:
As if the forecast isn’t crazy enough already, you can add a snowfall warning for the East Coast of the Island. They could get up to 10cm of snow tonight before the craziness starts tomorrow! HAH! Maybe it’ll be a blizzard. Oy… like I said, batten down the hatches.
The wind warning has been updated as well… the important change:
“Sustained southerly winds of 80 to 100 km/h with peak gusts from 110 to 140 km/h will develop Wednesday morning over West Vancouver Island and Wednesday afternoon over North Vancouver Island and central coast.” This is an upgrade from before… as they set the limit at 110kph for Southern sections of the West Coast.
UPDATE 1:
Hopefully you all can see these videos if you can’t, you should make sure you are using the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome or Safari to browse the web (preferably not IE)
Here is the GFS Model showing the storm.
Yellow is up to 75kph, orange is up to 100kph, and red is up to 120kph or more.
Click here for a downloadable Quicktime version.
So we have a potentially dangerous windstorm brewing off the coast right now.
Here it is on tuesday afternoons sat picture. Notice the tight presure, down to 987mb.
The storm is going to deepen, and get stronger.
Here is the forecast chart for Wednesday morning.
(click to see a larger version)
You’ll notice in the 2nd chart the flags with triangles, those indicate 50knot (~95kph) winds and peak winds of 65 (one triangle, plus 1.5 lines)
The good news is that the worst of this storm is headed north of us to places much more used to extreme weather. (Cape Scott, Solander Island, Brooks Peninsula, Sandspit).
The bad news is that this storm will be intense enough to give us winds we have not seen since the big storms in November and December 2006.
Current warnings are in place for sustained winds of at least 70kph and gust here (in Port Alberni) up to 100kph. Gusts in Nanaimo will approach 110kph. Gusts on the West Coast (Tofino/Ucluelet) will approach 120kph. And gusts on the North Island will approach an incredible 140kph.
These winds will be able to take down significant trees and could cause things like shingles to be blown off roofs, etc.
Accuweather.com has a good analysis of where the strongest winds will be.
Here is a possible timeline you can expect based on the forecasts and models I’ve seen.
______________
3AM-6AM: Will be windy, debris on roads… flickering lights
6AM-9AM: Strong Gusts can be expected. Branches down – debris, possible power outages
9AM-12PM: The peak of the storm. Very strong winds (gusting to 100kph). Not recommended to be outside or near trees. Power outages likely. This is unfortunately timed with a 3.1m high tide at 10:51AM so there may be flooding on 3rd Ave. due to the storm surge.
12PM-3PM: Strong winds continuing
6PM onwards: Storm should have subsided somewhat but it will remain blustery into the evening.
_______________
That’s all for now…. batten down the hatches!
About The Author
Comments
10 responses to “UPDATE 2: Damaging Wind Storm Wednesday”
Thanks for the timing predictions Chris. I’m hoping it will pass far enough off the coast that we won’t feel the worst of it. Here is an image of the stom as it passes through on the way to the north coast:
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/basicwx/95f.gif
Spent part of this afternoon tying things down. Looking forward to being rocked to sleep in the float house tonight, and maybe getting the day “off” tomorrow, though i also really hope nothing gets damaged and no trees fall on my place at the lake while I’m out here at work!
P.S. Stay out of Cathedral Grove tomorrow, everyone! I still remember being stuck in a lineup in there on Dec 11/06 while the cops decided whether or not to close the road (they did….)
O.K………….. I’m torn between excitement and freight but mostly excitement…..I’m bad. Falling trees and debris moving sideways I do not like so much. Whatever comes, everyone be safe and watch out for your neighbours as well. Godspeed, we don’t need any more bad news!!
well it’ll be interesting at work tomorrow (10 miles down the canal)
Raining on the west coast already, and the winds are starting to pick up. my place clocked a 21.8knt gust at 8:39pm. So, it’s slowly creeping up on us.
We should know we’re at peak intensity when the barometer hits around 985mb or 98.5kpa. that seems to be the minimum the models have us hitting.
what I can’t believe is the amount of snow still in the forecast!
Check out the latest update!
Got over half an inch of snow this evening so far, and it doesn’t look like its letting up either… see what happens when this wind picks up.