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What's 'Thundersnow'?
Winter Storm Sweeps Through State
Many Wisconsin residents are reporting instances of thunder and lightning as Thursday's winter storm sweeps through the state. Is that for real?
WISC-TV meteorologist Karin Swanson has a description of this unusual weather phenomena.
Swanson said that "thundersnow" is fairly uncommon.
"This is something that occurs when we have a big snowstorm like this one," she said. "Typically, when we see/hear thundersnow, the thundersnow will be accompanied by heavy snow with high snowfall rates.
"For instance, it isn't out of the question to get a good 2 to 3 inches of snow very quickly when we have thundersnow," she said.
As for being dangerous, Swanson said, "It's just as dangerous as a summertime thunderstorm, and people should take the same types of precautions."
Copyright 2006 by Channel 3000. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060217/cold_snow_prairies_060217/20060217?hub=CTVNewsAt11
Canadian winter returns with a vengeance
CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Fri. Feb. 17 2006 11:26 PM ET
After a balmy January, winter is back with a vengeance. At least five people died in weather-related accidents Friday as freezing rain, wind and snowstorms battered a wide swathe of Canada.
"It is wild out there. There's a lot of misery on the weather map from coast to coast to coast," said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
"We'd sent out search parties looking for winter and we finally found it, and it's here, and it's beginning to bite us deep and hard."
The change in weather, from a warm Thursday with melting snow and rain to below freezing temperatures on Friday with high winds, caused the icy roads.
"The weather models all indicated it would happen more gradually and it happened a lot faster," said Sgt. Rick Lavigne of the Ottawa police. "It sort of caught us off guard."
Four die in Ontario
In Ontario, the weather brought freezing rain, ice pellets, snow and the rare winter phenomenon of thunder and lightning forecasters call "thundersnow."
A winter storm caused white-out conditions just east of Ottawa near the small town of Embrun on Highway 417. The bad road conditions caused 37 vehicles to slam into one another
Police said as many four people died, while 40 people were injured, 11 of them with serious or critical injuries. Two of the dead were a father and his young daughter.
Jason Baker was in one of the first cars involved in the pileup.
"This one was the ultimate whiteout -- a wall of snow," Baker, 27, told The Canadian Press.
Baker ran from his car as soon as he heard a loud bang. Firefighters on the scene said that may have saved his life, along with countless others who did the same.
Provincial police Const. Dana Mellon acknowledged that the number of injured could grow because of the number of vehicles involved.
"We were asking the public to try and stay off of these major highways . . .because of these blowing snow conditions, because it was just causing these whiteouts," Mellon said.
"In the span of 20 years of policing and 14 in this area, I've never seen anything like this," OPP Const. Diana Hampson told CTV News.
"The road is still closed. We'll be working well into the weekend on this crash to try and determine exactly what happened, what vehicles were involved and who was driving etc."
West of Ottawa, near Arnprior, high winds and slick roads resulted in another pileup involving 30 vehicles, where five people were left with minor injuries.
Police closed off several parts of the Trans-Canada Highway between Pembrooke, Ont. and Montreal because of various car pileups.
Air travel was also disrupted in Ottawa as 71 people were stuck on the ground in a plane for more than six hours until Air Canada decided the plane could take off.
An extreme cold weather alert was issued for Toronto Friday. High winds that reached as high as 59 km/h hit the city, causing delays at Pearson International Airport.
Toronto Hydro was flooded with calls of homes without power as powerful winds brought down power lines and uprooted mature trees.
Meanwhile, snow squalls north of Toronto made driving nearly impossible.
Car pileup in Montreal
Freezing rain and high winds caused a huge pileup on a highway 50 kilometres east of Montreal Friday afternoon. One man was killed and 40 people were injured after the chain-reaction accident involving as many as 60 cars.
Two women were seriously injured and not every one had been rescued, police spokeswoman Manon Gaignard told CP.
"People were still trapped in their vehicles," she said.
Police closed a large stretch of the busy highway between Ottawa and Montreal and didn't expect it to reopen until Sunday.
In Montreal, the wind gusts reached 110 km/h, blowing a roof off a school building, and causing a train to derail and dangle over a Montreal bridge.
Meanwhile, about 119,000 homes were left without power throughout Quebec.
On Friday, police implored people in Ontario and Quebec to stay off the icy, windy highways.
Deep freeze in the Prairies
Winter came back to the Prairies after the flow of warm air from the west stopped this week, said Environment Canada meteorologist Dale Marciski.
"That flow has stopped, and been replaced by a more northerly flow," he told CP. "It's what happens every winter, it just didn't happen when it usually does this year."
Environment Canada issued a wind-chill warning for most of southern Manitoba as overnight temperatures were expected to reach -45 C.
In Winnipeg, hundreds of car batteries wouldn't start and some people flocked to the mall to buy extra winter gear as the day's high of -23 C combined with a wind chill that felt like a bone-numbing -36 C.
The temperature in Calgary reached -20 C, while it was -50 C with the wind chill in Regina.
According to Phillips, the weather is typical for an average Canadian winter.
"All of this is a bit of a yawner from a weather point of view," said Phillips. "It's dramatic because it's so sudden."
Winds gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour are expected to sweep across New Brunswick and the rest of Atlantic Canada as the weather system that hit Ontario and Quebec moved east.
Environment Canada is forecasting that the bitterly cold weather will remain across the country for at least the next 10 days.
U.S. storm kills two
A fierce storm also swept across the midwestern United States and into the northeast Friday, causing temperatures to dive and winds to reach as high as 124 km/h.
In western New York, temperatures dropped from close to 15 C to below freezing within several hours. High winds knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and offices. Schools were also closed.
The winter freeze went east after battering the midwest U.S. Thursday.
About 100,000 customers in Michigan were still without power Friday after 97 km/h winds blew through the state.
Some homes and businesses are expected to be without power until Sunday.
With reports from CTV's David Akin, Stephane Giroux, Austin Delaney and Marcia MacMillan and files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
Channel3000.com
What's 'Thundersnow'?
Winter Storm Sweeps Through State
Many Wisconsin residents are reporting instances of thunder and lightning as Thursday's winter storm sweeps through the state. Is that for real?
WISC-TV meteorologist Karin Swanson has a description of this unusual weather phenomena.
Swanson said that "thundersnow" is fairly uncommon.
"This is something that occurs when we have a big snowstorm like this one," she said. "Typically, when we see/hear thundersnow, the thundersnow will be accompanied by heavy snow with high snowfall rates.
"For instance, it isn't out of the question to get a good 2 to 3 inches of snow very quickly when we have thundersnow," she said.
As for being dangerous, Swanson said, "It's just as dangerous as a summertime thunderstorm, and people should take the same types of precautions."
Copyright 2006 by Channel 3000. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060217/cold_snow_prairies_060217/20060217?hub=CTVNewsAt11
Canadian winter returns with a vengeance
CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Fri. Feb. 17 2006 11:26 PM ET
After a balmy January, winter is back with a vengeance. At least five people died in weather-related accidents Friday as freezing rain, wind and snowstorms battered a wide swathe of Canada.
"It is wild out there. There's a lot of misery on the weather map from coast to coast to coast," said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
"We'd sent out search parties looking for winter and we finally found it, and it's here, and it's beginning to bite us deep and hard."
The change in weather, from a warm Thursday with melting snow and rain to below freezing temperatures on Friday with high winds, caused the icy roads.
"The weather models all indicated it would happen more gradually and it happened a lot faster," said Sgt. Rick Lavigne of the Ottawa police. "It sort of caught us off guard."
Four die in Ontario
In Ontario, the weather brought freezing rain, ice pellets, snow and the rare winter phenomenon of thunder and lightning forecasters call "thundersnow."
A winter storm caused white-out conditions just east of Ottawa near the small town of Embrun on Highway 417. The bad road conditions caused 37 vehicles to slam into one another
Police said as many four people died, while 40 people were injured, 11 of them with serious or critical injuries. Two of the dead were a father and his young daughter.
Jason Baker was in one of the first cars involved in the pileup.
"This one was the ultimate whiteout -- a wall of snow," Baker, 27, told The Canadian Press.
Baker ran from his car as soon as he heard a loud bang. Firefighters on the scene said that may have saved his life, along with countless others who did the same.
Provincial police Const. Dana Mellon acknowledged that the number of injured could grow because of the number of vehicles involved.
"We were asking the public to try and stay off of these major highways . . .because of these blowing snow conditions, because it was just causing these whiteouts," Mellon said.
"In the span of 20 years of policing and 14 in this area, I've never seen anything like this," OPP Const. Diana Hampson told CTV News.
"The road is still closed. We'll be working well into the weekend on this crash to try and determine exactly what happened, what vehicles were involved and who was driving etc."
West of Ottawa, near Arnprior, high winds and slick roads resulted in another pileup involving 30 vehicles, where five people were left with minor injuries.
Police closed off several parts of the Trans-Canada Highway between Pembrooke, Ont. and Montreal because of various car pileups.
Air travel was also disrupted in Ottawa as 71 people were stuck on the ground in a plane for more than six hours until Air Canada decided the plane could take off.
An extreme cold weather alert was issued for Toronto Friday. High winds that reached as high as 59 km/h hit the city, causing delays at Pearson International Airport.
Toronto Hydro was flooded with calls of homes without power as powerful winds brought down power lines and uprooted mature trees.
Meanwhile, snow squalls north of Toronto made driving nearly impossible.
Car pileup in Montreal
Freezing rain and high winds caused a huge pileup on a highway 50 kilometres east of Montreal Friday afternoon. One man was killed and 40 people were injured after the chain-reaction accident involving as many as 60 cars.
Two women were seriously injured and not every one had been rescued, police spokeswoman Manon Gaignard told CP.
"People were still trapped in their vehicles," she said.
Police closed a large stretch of the busy highway between Ottawa and Montreal and didn't expect it to reopen until Sunday.
In Montreal, the wind gusts reached 110 km/h, blowing a roof off a school building, and causing a train to derail and dangle over a Montreal bridge.
Meanwhile, about 119,000 homes were left without power throughout Quebec.
On Friday, police implored people in Ontario and Quebec to stay off the icy, windy highways.
Deep freeze in the Prairies
Winter came back to the Prairies after the flow of warm air from the west stopped this week, said Environment Canada meteorologist Dale Marciski.
"That flow has stopped, and been replaced by a more northerly flow," he told CP. "It's what happens every winter, it just didn't happen when it usually does this year."
Environment Canada issued a wind-chill warning for most of southern Manitoba as overnight temperatures were expected to reach -45 C.
In Winnipeg, hundreds of car batteries wouldn't start and some people flocked to the mall to buy extra winter gear as the day's high of -23 C combined with a wind chill that felt like a bone-numbing -36 C.
The temperature in Calgary reached -20 C, while it was -50 C with the wind chill in Regina.
According to Phillips, the weather is typical for an average Canadian winter.
"All of this is a bit of a yawner from a weather point of view," said Phillips. "It's dramatic because it's so sudden."
Winds gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour are expected to sweep across New Brunswick and the rest of Atlantic Canada as the weather system that hit Ontario and Quebec moved east.
Environment Canada is forecasting that the bitterly cold weather will remain across the country for at least the next 10 days.
U.S. storm kills two
A fierce storm also swept across the midwestern United States and into the northeast Friday, causing temperatures to dive and winds to reach as high as 124 km/h.
In western New York, temperatures dropped from close to 15 C to below freezing within several hours. High winds knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and offices. Schools were also closed.
The winter freeze went east after battering the midwest U.S. Thursday.
About 100,000 customers in Michigan were still without power Friday after 97 km/h winds blew through the state.
Some homes and businesses are expected to be without power until Sunday.
With reports from CTV's David Akin, Stephane Giroux, Austin Delaney and Marcia MacMillan and files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
