Zinck Family Weather Blog

Rain Rain Go Away!

2007-12-23T13:02:00.001-05:00

After record snowfall in late November and early December, we were treated today to a one-day thaw. The temperature this morning was +2C and it is expected to rise up to +8C this afternoon and then fall to -3 over night. Wild weather!

In preparation I shoveled the snow off our deck and also clean scraped the snow off the driveway and opened up the sewer drain.

We are expecting high winds and close to 30mm of rain with a chance of Thunderstorms! I am sure a lot of folks are worried about flooding and also of roof problems. We had a little bit of water in our cold room (under the front steps) this am, but so far that is all!

Here is a picture of the weather radar of 1pm today (Ottawa is close to the center). It looks like we are soon to get a lot of rain!

Blizzard!

2007-12-16T14:49:00.000-05:00

While not the first storm this winter, today's storm was certainly the biggest! We woke up this morning to light snow. By 11am we had about 10cm on the driveway with drifts of nearly 2 feet. By 2pm we had another 15 cm and it is still coming down! The snow plow has only gone by once and we are on a relatively major street.

Environment Canada put out warning on this storm on Saturday with the introduction:

A CRIPPLING MAJOR WINTER STORM WITH HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING
SNOW AS WELL AS SOME ICE PELLETS IS MOVING IN RIGHT ON SCHEDULE
TONIGHT.

That certainly got our attention! The original forecast was for 45-60 cm of snow.

Here is a link to CBC Canada story on the storm.

Here is a snapshot of the radar picture as of about 2:45pm Ottawa Time. AS you can see more snow is one the way!

The good news is that no one had to go to work today, the bad news is that Alana's work Christmas Party was canceled...hopefully it can be rescheduled.

To give you an idea of the intensity of this storm, here is a graph showing Barometric Pressure over the last 2 days from a nearby weather station. The pressure dropped from ~103.4 to ~994 in just under 24 hours.

Here is a picture of our garden shed as of about 1pm.. lots of snow!

and here is a picture of our deck. Under all that snow is a plastic table. This is the most snow I can ever remember in one storm since we have moved to Ottawa 13 years ago!

According to our home weather station the low temperature this morning was about -15C. It only warmed up to about -12. We recorded wind gusts of over 25 km/h this afternoon. I am sure the roads are terrible but hopefully all will be cleaned up before the drive to work Monday morning.

Here is a picture of Matthew and Anna as they help clear the walkway:

To give you a better idea of the amount of snow, here they are in front of the snow bank along side our driveway:

Finally, here is a picture of our street at 6:30pm.. hard to beleive that winter is not even officially here yet!

Winter Storm!

2007-11-22T14:37:00.001-05:00

Today we had our first taste of winter in the Ottawa Valley. Within about 12 hours close to 20 cm of snow fell at our house in Kanata. At times it was mixed with rain and freezing rain. Driving conditions were terrible and hundreds of accidents were reported across the region.

Click here for a news story on the storm.

Luckily I had the winter tires already on the van and the snowblower all gassed up. However, I decided to take the bus to work just to avoid driving. I think I made the correct call!

Here are some pictures of the results of the storm, just as it was ending:

With the forecast saying that it will remain cold for the next while I think this snow may last!

Tom

Hail Storm in Southern NB: Aug 3

2007-08-08T08:52:00.000-04:00

Here are some pics my dad sent me from St. Stephen NB after a NASTY hail storm on Aug 3caused quite a bit of damage to his property. There were away camping for the weekend and missed the storm. There was lots of similar damage to other properties in the area.

Here is one of the many holes in the siding:

Damage to the fences.. it looks like a shotgun blast!

Damage to the shingles.... wow!

and worst of all.. Dad's large vegetable garden was destroyed.. here is a hole in one of his green peppers.

Rain Storm

2007-07-02T16:51:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures we took of a nice rain storm on July 2nd. We were up at the Brule Lookout in the Gatineau Hills and the storms were moving up the river towards Ottawa.

June 8th Thunder Storms!

2007-06-09T09:47:00.000-04:00

A line of strong thunderstorms preceded a cold-front that moved through Ontario today.

Here is a picture of the line of storms at about 6pm:

Starting just after lunch we received numerous Weather Warning notifications via email and on our weather radios at home.

Just after supper my weather radio decoded a Tornado Warning for the area! Wow! Warning and watches were up for most of Eastern Ontario. The City of Ottawa was under a Tornado Watch for most of the evening.

Here is a picture from my APRS map showing the Weather Warnings and Watches put out by Environment Canada:

The storm hit Kanata at 7:22pm with HEAVY rain and many lightening strikes. We had several power-bumps but the storm was over by about 8pm.

Here is a picture of one of the cloud formations we saw just as the storm hit:

According to our rain gauge we had about 0.8" or rain in under 20 minutes.

There were reports of a possible tornado touching down in the Bancroft area (about 160Kms west of Kanata) and there is lots of storm info in the Ottawa Sun Article.

Tom

Spring Storm!

2007-04-16T07:54:00.000-04:00

Wow! After a relatively inactive spring, we get this NASTY storm today. As of this am it amount to close to 8cm of HEAVY snow.

Check out the pictures!

Winter arrives!

2007-01-16T21:48:00.000-05:00

Well, after a very mild start of winter, Mother Nature has waken up! The high temperature today was -15C and yesterday we received about 14cm of snow here in Kanata.

Expecting a low of about -25C tonight! Brrrr!

Tom

Dec 1: Nasty storm!

2006-12-01T18:52:00.000-05:00

Wow! what a wild 24 hours it has been! The temperature Thursday afternoon reached a high of 14C at about 2pm. By 5pm the temperature had fallen to 2C! The forcast was calling for 10-15cm and snow in the morning followd by 20mm of freezing rain.

As usual, we were not quite prepared for winter so I had to quickly clean out the garage to make sure I could put the van in. We still have all-season tires on the van, so I was expecting the worst!

Waking up on Friday morning it was just starting to snow a bit by the time I arrived at work. A few hours later we had mixed snow and freezing rain.

Here is a pic of the 12-hour pressure map taken from the VE3BSM weather station:

The weather warning put out by Environment Canada seemed very ominus:

FREEZING RAIN AND ICE PELLETS ENDING THIS AFTERNOON OR THIS
EVENING.

THIS IS A WARNING THAT AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF FREEZING RAIN IS
IMMINENT OR OCCURRING IN THESE REGIONS. MONITOR WEATHER
CONDITIONS..LISTEN FOR UPDATED STATEMENTS.

Here is pic of the weather radar map from about 10am:

Buy the time it was time for me to leave work there was HEAVY rain mixed with ice pellets. I had to scrape off about 10mm of ice from the van. I took the side-roads home and made it home with no problems.

The Ottawa Police Service issued this statement regarding road condtions at 4pm :

(Ottawa) - The Ottawa Police Service is advising that due to the
current weather conditions, some trees / branches have fallen in various
areas though out the City.  Some of these trees have fallen on electrical
wires.Some of the affected intersections:Dunning / ColonialStrathcona /
BankLafontaine / McArthurColdrey / KirkwoodMcCordick / CowellManotick
Station / Snake IslandHerberts Corners / Manotick StationGregoire /
MarvelvilleDunning / Innes Genest / Marier Edgehill Place / Heron Eagleson
/ FlewellynPeter Robinson / MarchForest Green Cresent / 8 th
LinePleasant Park / Alta VistaCumberland / Bolton

5pm Radar map:

By 6pm the worst of the rain/freezing rain was over. There was abot 3 cms of ice/snow on the driveway at home. Here is a pic of the ice on our deck, and a cell-phone pic of the front yard:

The wind was just picking up at about 6:30pm and in listening to the scanner there are many localized power outages and also many reports of vehicles in the ditch and trees down. With the temperature going to -3C tonight it will be a good night not to go out!

First Snow!

2006-10-22T13:59:00.000-04:00

With the outside temperature hovering around 2.5C we had some mixed snow and freezing rain today. Pressure was 1011.1 and falling. No accumulation, but certainly made us aware that winter is coming fast!

First Frost

2006-09-30T10:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been a warm and wet fall here in Eastern Ontario. We finally had our first frost here last night with a low temperature of 2C. Time to clean out the garage so we can park the van inside!

Ernesto

2006-09-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

After a VERY dry month of August we finally got a nice dump of rain, courtesy of the remnamants of Tropical Hurricane/Depression Ernesto.

In just over 12 hours we received close to 2.5" of rain, as you can see in the picture of our spiffy new low-tech rain gauge.

The local pressure dropped from 103.0 down to 101.7 from the start to the end of the rain.

Nice clouds!

2006-08-19T14:15:00.000-04:00

On our weekly "hike" on the NCC trails I took this nice picture of some cloud formations. Picture was taken at about 10:30am.

Aug 2: Tornado in Eastern Ontario!

2006-08-05T14:17:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, Aug 2, a line of severe storms moved though Eastern Ontario. A Tornado warning was issued by Environment Canada. In the 12 years we have lived in Kanata this was the first Tornado warning that we can remember being issued.

Here are some pics of the damage done to the community of Combermere Ontario (about 150 kms North West of Ottawa) from a F2 Tornado that touched down.

Here is a capture of the weather radar just as the storm was about to hit Ottawa:

Here is the text of the warning sent out by Environment Canada just before the storm hit:

105
WFCN11 CWTO 030112
TORNADO WARNING
UPDATED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA
AT 9:12 PM EDT WEDNESDAY 2 AUGUST 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TORNADO WARNING FOR:
=NEW= OTTAWA NORTH - KANATA - ORLEANS
=NEW= OTTAWA SOUTH - RICHMOND - METCALFE
=NEW= GATINEAU
BANCROFT - HASTINGS HIGHLANDS - DENBIGH
PLEVNA - SHARBOT LAKE - WESTERN LANARK COUNTY
SMITHS FALLS - PERTH - EASTERN LANARK COUNTY.

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING UPGRADED TO TORNADO WARNING FOR:
OTTAWA NORTH - KANATA - ORLEANS
OTTAWA SOUTH - RICHMOND - METCALFE
GATINEAU.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
==DISCUSSION==
A CLUSTER OF SUPERCELLS ARE LOCATED IN THE ABOVE NOTED REGIONS.
DOPPLER RADAR REVEALS STRONG TORNADIC SIGNATURES ON EACH OF THESE
THUNDERSTORMS.
ONE OF THE STORMS WITH POSSIBLE TORNADO IS MOVING TOWARDS THE CITY
OF OTTAWA AND IS EXPECTED THERE NEAR 9:30.

THIS IS A WARNING THAT SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WITH TORNADOES ARE
IMMINENT OR OCCURRING IN THESE REGIONS. MONITOR WEATHER CONDITIONS.
TAKE IMMEDIATE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS.

NOTE..A SUMMARY OF ALL WARNINGS
AND WATCHES FOR SOUTHERN ONTARIO IS AVAILABLE IN THE WWCN11 CWTO
BULLETIN ISSUED IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THIS BULLETIN.

END/3/CHADWICK/ROS

June 28th Weather

2006-08-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

On June 28th, 2006, the remenants of a tropical storm system moved through the Ottawa Valley. here are some of the pics of the cloud formations that we saw from our deck. Very cool!

Short video of lightening that was part of this storm

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