Comments on: Reprieve Granted

By: junior

junior — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:12:20 +0000

@Doug: Thanks for the good wishes; don't screw your back up, dude. Here's how it went locally.

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:21:05 +0000

Good luck digging and blowing tonight. I spent a good 2 hours on my tiny driveway this afternoon. I expect more in the morning.

By: junior

junior — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:26:42 +0000

Update:

Answered – From December 19 Hamilton Spectator:

Geoff Coulson, a meteorologist at Environment Canada, said Hamilton and the surrounding area will be hit harder than other locations as the easterly winds come off Lake Ontario.

“You’re getting more than your fair share,” he said.

Higher elevations, like Grimsby and Mount Hope, could be looking at 30 centimetres of snow today, Coulson said.

By: junior

junior — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:52:05 +0000

I'm not yet sure what patterns prevail in the Juniorvanian hinterlands. Southern Ontario is a weird place for weather, because there are areas where lake effect snow is quite prevalent - just slightly inland from the eastern shore of Lake Huron, for example, as well as much of the north shore of Erie and basically the entire Niagara Peninsula. Lake effect snow has been known to happen in Hamilton, but the wind (as I understand it) has to be moving across the lake generally from east to west for this to happen; that's the exact opposite direction for our usual prevailing winds. Where it gets even weirder here in southern Ontari-ari-ari-o is when the enhanced precipitation zones kind of overlap on their extreme inland margins. For example, there's an area around Woodstock that always seems to get pounded whenever there's a snowstorm of any kind, and I believe it's because the area is getting enhanced snowfall from lakes in three directions - Huron to the northwest, Ontario to the east, and Erie to the south. Woodstock isn't particularly close to any of those lakes, but neither is it very far. Move away from Woodstock in virtually any direction (i.e. closer to the lakes), and it's been my experience that you run into less, not more, snow.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:57:53 +0000

Do you get lake-effect style snow, or is that something for Buffalonians and Chicagomites to, er, weather?

We’ve got “micro” climates here; at the plant where I work it was absolutely pouring all day — yet we get ten miles south, going home, and it’s a peaceable light drizzle, as though welcoming you to the rain. A precipitation primer, if you will.