Freezing Rain or snow Saturday East Vancouver Island
The extremely wintery weather continues this weekend, starting Friday night. There is still some disagreement in the models so this forecast will sound a little different from this morning’s Environment Canada forecast.
The UWash model is currently showing light precipitation beginning midday Saturday on the East side of the Island and creeping into the mountain passes including Highway 4/The Hump/Sutton Pass. This could be freezing rain, light snow, rain, or all three.
From the 10AM-1PM image above it looks like snow will spill out of the Fraser Valley and cross the Strait to Vancouver Island.
By Saturday night it starts to look more like an Outflow wind from Howe Sound and Fraser Valley with Strait Effect snow landing around Nanaimo and Ladysmith.
Accumulations don’t look high here but it will probably feel cold with the windchilll. There is also some precipitation creeping up toward Parksville by the 7PM-10PM period.
In the midnight hours 10PM-1AM it looks like Strait effect gets going in the Parksville, Qualicum and Bowser which could also include Highway 4.
Snowy Sunday Port Alberni
By Sunday morning the cold air has moved over the Beaufort’s and it looks like we start to get snow in the Alberni Valley. The picture below is 7-10AM, the green area is snowfall. You can also see the easterly winds pushing out of the Strait of Juan de Luca and Barkley Sound. An indication of the cold air that will be in play.
Expect a very cold and icy day on Sunday with flurries most of the day though it should stop toward the late afternoon and evening.
Bigger Snow Tuesday but then possibly warming.
A blob of moisture attacks the west coast Tuesday next week.
The cold air should stick around until then, giving this to be potential for a larger snowfall event across the Island. We’ll wait to see how it pans out.
Thankfully, the crazy predictions of a few days ago of -20ºC weather on Wednesday have disappeared. It now looks more like maybe -5ºC to -10ºC at the most. Though the model below for Monday morning is still insisting on -16ºC to -13ºC. (4ºF-8ºF).
The windchills in the Fraser Valley might get below -20ºC but I just can’t see actual temperatures getting down that far. Port Alberni has only had -20ºC temperatures in its records a few times since 1900, and none since the 1960s.
Twitter posting blocked
Unfortunately it appears the powers that be at Twitter are now preventing cross-posting from Mastodon to Twitter. My posts have been blocked from Mastodon. So that has effectively shut off my posting on my Twitter account completely. I will not be posting weather items there anymore. Please do sign up on Mastodon Canada (mstdn.ca) and look for me there. It’s a great site and you’ll see all of my regular posts there.
I will be replacing the embedded Twitter timeline on my front-page with the timeline from Mastodon as soon as I find the code to do that.
I apologize that the new owner of Twitter has caused all this silly upheaval. It’s very unfortunate and a real shame.
Update: Mastodon Feed plugin found!
I’ll replace the twitter feed on the front-page and elsewhere with the Mastodon feed.
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