harrisale

To me on the water vapour loop it looks like there's still some dry air wrapping into the southern part of the storm from the west/south. Not sure it'll have enough time to fully clear that out and ramp up to forecast intensity before landfall. We'll see if the latest burst of convection on the north side of the storm can fully wrap around the centre, then we might have a bit more to work with before landfall.

Worth noting that the Bay of Fundy (New Brunswick) has some of the largest tides in the world. A big surge pushing up the Bay could make for some serious coastal flooding/erosion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1869_Saxby_Gale

Stoked for the S Ontario crew! Looks like a big one... Always wanted to see a proper blizzard. I'm a bit jealous I'll be honest. I have a buddy who's supposed to drive Guelph to Hanover for the weekend... I'm trying to get him to leave early or I don't know if he'll make it at all!

Watching this one from out West. Stoked for the folks back home. FWIW, we're just waking up to a 10-12" storm here in Southern BC; the same energy thats going to spin up the big system out east. Quite an over-performer here (forecast 6-8") and it turns out a CMC/ECMWF blend was more accurate than the GFS a few days out. Do with that information what you will!

Live stream from Louisbourg, Nova Scotia:

Congrats YYZ on the Blizzard Warning. Interested to see how this one ranks once all is said and done. I live on the west coast now but just popped in to comment. Always wanted to witness a proper Toronto blizzard so I'm glad it finally happened! Enjoy the snow walks.

The prime environment was definitely a little farther SE than expected. Possibly caught a few folks off-guard today, and thus fatalities. Hoping people are heeding the warnings now and we keep that number to 3.

That's big time. And earlier in the thread we had posts about SRH being the bust factor today!

3 fatalities reported in Ohatchee, AL according to James Spann on ABC 33/40.

Just wait until the first office outbreak and you'll be back at home in no time Around here, still a blanket instruction for all citizens that if they can work from home, they should be doing so. Our office doesn't foresee a return until mid-summer, maybe even September (when most people should be vaccinated).

Multiple provinces in Canada have detected the UK strain and at least one province (Alberta) has the South African variant as well.

At this pace, do you think the US could reach herd immunity through infection before it does via vaccination? CDC estimated 91 million actual infections from Feb-Sept alone... obviously many more since then and only at an increasing rate. If the CDC estimates only 1 in 7.2 cases are being reported, and the US currently sits at 21,920,352 cases, that would translate to 157,826,534 actual infections so far, which is about 48% of the population. Of course, this assumes you can only catch the virus once. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html (apologies if this has been discussed already)

Thanksgiving in Canada is not as big a deal as it is in the US, but people still generally spend the long weekend with close family and often travel. My observation is that in the US Thanksgiving and Christmas are on-par, while in Canada Christmas easily takes the cake as the bigger celebration. I think we had somewhat of a bump from Thanksgiving, but there were also other factors that were also contributing to increasing caseload (weather, schools back in, general COVID fatigue etc.).

Agreed, just not enough cold air in place ahead of this thing, even with a big phase. Same system in January would be something...

Hazel resulted in the largest one day rainfall total ever measured in Toronto (YYZ). There was some serious flooding in the city’s west end and a total of 35 deaths. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Hazel_in_Canada