Atlantic Canada Blizzard Forecast

Atlantic Canada Winter Storm Discussion
An alberta clipper system located across the ohio valley has a current minimum sea level pressure of 1016mb. This system will move off the eastern seaboard later tonight and then begin its movement towards atlantic canada. As this system does so it will phase with polar vortex energy diving south from hudson bay as the trough axis goes negative. This will create a huge amount of lift as the system interacts with the very impressive pressure gradient setting up along the east coast with cold arctic air to the north and warm SST's to the SE. The system will move along this boundary and bombogenesis will take place which means that the area of LP will deepen by more then 24mb in a 24 hour period. More then a 70mb pressure gradient will take place between the storm and a blocking high to the northeast. This block will prevent the system from exiting to the northeast, causing it to stall out and move NW. All of these atmospheric factors will create high snow amounts and blizzard conditions where enough cold air is in place.

The storm will begin to deepen sunday night and really get cranking monday morning. Across nova scotia, light to moderate snows will break out across the province sunday night with the heaviest precipitation to the south. A changeover to rain will occur for the central and northern part of the province early monday morning as warm air gets pulled up from the southeast. As the storm begins to intensify further and the LP center moves NE, temperatures will begin to crash very quickly leading to a change over to heavy snow and blizzard conditions across cape breton island, halifax and central NS. I think the change over will be very quick across halifax and more significant to the north. As the system begins to move to the north white out conditions are likely across labrador, gaspe, PEI, cape breton and halifax. Precipitation will stay as all rain for most of newfoundland. Winds will be very strong with this system and gusts can exceed 100kph at times, especially across eastern cape breton island, PEI and western nova scotia. With strong winds comes very impressive blowing and drifting snow. Motorists are asked to stay off the roads with visibility of less then 1/4 of a mile monday afternoon and evening across PEI, cape breton and central NS. Snow drifts may exceed 2 feet in areas that pick up significant snows and are exposed to strong winds.

With all of this being said here are my snowfall accumulations for cities across Atlantic Canada
Halifax: 10-20cm of snow, wind gusts up to 60kph
Cape Breton: 15-25cm of snow, wind gusts up to 105kph in the east
Sydney: 10-20cm of snow, wind gust up to 90kph
Gaspe: 7-15cm of snow, wind gusts up to 90kph
Charlottetown: 20-30cm of snow, wind gusts up to 75kph
Moncton: 5-15cm of snow, wind gusts up to 60kph
Cap-Pele: 10-15cm of snow, wind gusts up to 70kph
Antigonish: 12-18cm of snow, wind gusts up to 85kph
Yarmouth: 8-15cm of snow, wind gusts up to 85kph

My Track and Intensity Forecast:

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If you have any questions or you would like a forecast for your area just ask away!