March 7th-8th Snowstorm
March 7-8 Snowstorm
This will be the worst snowstorm of the winter 2007-2008 season. There you go, I said it.
It can be argued that the snowfall we received on February 5-6 was astonishing (up to 35 cm in East York); however, it was lacking the winds that is often associated with crippling snowstorms and we received rain the previous day. The lowest pressure we recorded here at the Toronto East York weather station was an impressive 999.3 mb. Although the March 7-8 storm will not reach that level (more like 1004 mb), the impact will be more significant considering we’ve just had a snowstorm 48 hours ago and the winds are expected to reach in excess of 60 km/h from the north.
Some numbers to consider…
Snowfall forecast: (as of 10:00 pm March 7)
Environment Canada - 30 to 40 cm
The Weather Network - 25 to 30 cm
CityTV (Michael Kuss) - 20 to 30 cm
680 News (Brian Hill) - 20-30 cm
Accuweather (Brett Anderson) - 18 to 28 cm
As for my prediction, I’ve looked at all the available computer models (NGM, NAM, GFS) and it seems like we’ll get at least 25 cm but higher amounts here at East York due to the track of the storm. However, the GFS model is showing a dry slot just east of Pennsylvania and New York state but it won’t concern me that much.
If the forecast is correct, we could set new weather records for Toronto (at least based at Pearson Airport where they have keeping records since 1937). As of now, the record daily snowfall for March 8 is 17.8 cm set in 1980 while 20 cm was on the ground in 1999. And the all-time March daily record snowfall is 32.3 cm set in March 10, 1964. I’m more confident that we’ll break the first two records but the all-time March record, maybe not at Pearson. We could get localized snowfall of more than 30 cm but in higher elevations and east of the city.
To avoid confusion, we’re under a Winter Storm Warning. I don’t really appreciate it when some media outlets use the term “blizzard” since it does not fulfill the official definition as outlined by Environment Canada:
- Winter Storm Warning - issued when more than 25 cm of snow is expected to fall within 24 hours;
- or forecasters expect two or more Winter Weather Warning criteria to be exceeded simultaneously; for instance, if more than 15 cm of snow was expected to be accompanied by winds of more than 60 km/h.
Environment Canada issues a Blizzard Warning in Ontario when all of the following conditions are expected to persist for a minimum of 4 hours:
- winds of 50 km/h or more
- and visibility of 1 km or less
- and wind chill values of -25 or lower
With daytime highs around -3 and -5 degrees Celsius and sustained winds around 40 km/h, wind chill will only be between -12 and -15. Note that we don’t add the unit Celsius in wind chill since it’s not measured (like temperature) but calculated using a formula. More about wind chills in my next blog.
So sit back and relax. If you don’t like to battle the wind and the snow, monitor weather readings live using our Live Weather Updates.
Stay safe 
March 7th-8th Snowstorm - Part 2 »
