Feb 16 2025 - Let the Blizzard Begin

 

There's a tiny moment between 5:45 and 7:00 where there isn't a forecast.  Starting at 7:00am it is snow, snow, heavy snow. Well, actually, the forecast says "blizzard".  Look at the radar - so many colours of blue, then there's green and red. Red is for ice.   So it is blizzard until 1:00pm today when it becomes snow again.  It moves to light snow, then snow, then scattered flurries, then blowing snow. We're starting to move into Monday morning with a mix of sun and clouds - rise and shine it is 7:00am and your holiday weekend has been a long weekend forced to stay-at-home - a "Snoliday."   And what is a blizzard?  Three components are necessary - "high winds at least 40 km/h, visibility less than 400 meters and lasting for 4 hours.  That's the Canadian definition. And if we get a ground blizzard?   "Another type of winter storm is called a ground blizzard. This is when gusty winds—often 50 to 60 miles an hour—lift up snow that's already on the ground. Both types of blizzards can cause whiteouts, a condition in which so much snow is blowing so fast that it's hard to see anything." The worst blizzards in history were in Iran in 1872 and in Afghanistan in 2008.  Iran's was the deadliest blizzard in recorded history and dropped as much as 26 feet of snow, completely covering 200 villages. The Storm of the Century was in 1993 in the U.S. Toronto's great snow storm of 1999 is not covered in Wikipedia.  It is remembered for bringing out the military to clear the streets.

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Apr 21 2024 - Snow Blizzard Cherry Blossoms

 

The Weather Network has a video of winter snow and hail blizzard conditions in China.  Normally, the cherry blossoms fall to the ground/water creating a beautiful pink blanket.  Pink petals on the ground is desirable.  Pink petals, snow and hailstones is serious.  With climate change, the Weather Network is extremely busy - floods in Dubai, snow in China.  Here in Niagara the video says cherry blossoms Niagara and they are showing the Magnolia trees at the Floral Showcase in Niagara Falls.  They are beautiful pink, so maybe a good substitute for cherries.  We have more flower festivals in the area on the horizon - not just cherry blossoms.  There is a tourist tulip display on Seventh Avenue, just north of Fourth Street.  They grew fields of Dahlias last summer - I assume a picked flower crop.  They are advertising a tulip festival this weekend.  These flower festivals are starting to pop up in Ontario - the one that is best known is in Fenwick - TASC - they are advertising 2 million tulips this year.  They open in a week.   Checking the weather forecast, there don't seem to be any blizzards on our horizon.  The picture of the Magnolia tree with snow was from 2021 when we did get a snowstorm in April. The sense of movement is created with multiple exposures in camera.

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Jan 17 2022 - How High is the Ocean - How Deep is the Snow

 

Millie growled when she looked out at the back yard this morning.  She didn't like what she saw.  Really deep snow.  And it is getting deeper as we type. She had to go outside immediately when we got up and she isn't usually interested in going outside till after 8:00am or so.  She jumped down one stair - fine.  The second stair - OK. The third stair - Oh Oh. The fourth stair - just her head was above the snow line and that was too much.  She rushed back up the stairs and in the house, spreading snow bits everywhere.   This is the first big snow fall this year.  Last year she was smaller  and the big snow not so deep so she played happily in it. So we'll see this morning what she decides to do.   I was so intrigued with the tennis news this past week.  Novak Djokovic, the 34-year-old Serbian tennis champ currently ranked number one by the Association of Tennis Professionals by a substantial margin is unvaccinated for COVID-19. He was deported from Australia Sunday following a highly visible appeal.   He's done a lot of testing positive for COVID-19 supposedly within the last month. And he's been out in public a lot as well.  Flying here and there, etc.  That's a big contrast with the Olympics coming up.  The Beijing Olympics are already in the 'closed loop'.  It is sealed and guarded.  The loop, which began on Jan. 4 and will open fully by Jan. 23, according to state media, covers sealed-off sections of Olympic venues and designated accommodation, amounting to a series of bubbles.  Participants are required to move between them using designated transport. Everyone in the loop must have a daily PCR test administered by staff. In Tokyo, tests were largely self-administered. To leave their accommodation, participants must first scan their pass and wait for a green code to confirm they’ve had a negative test result within the last 24 hours. Comparing the situation of Australia and China, we are likely in for a lot of COVID news at the Olympics. It will make this Olympics the most exciting ever for reasons entirely other than sports.  Beijing's event is a large-scale experiment to be watched as much by scientists and politicians as by sports fans. Can there be a special COVID wave at the Olympics?   Isn't this such a great representation of the mysteries beyond.  We visited Brock University's new performing arts centre in 2017 and these were two of the images manipulated with Flaming Pear's India Ink plugin.

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Marilyn's Photo - Feb 28 - MEGA SQUALL in action

What does our weather warning say today?  It says:  "Life-threatening travel conditions with mega-squall."   "Blinding snow and howling winds are all features of a blizzard, but there are specific conditions that must be met or anticipated before it is deemed a blizzard or given a blizzard warning. The criteria are that winds must be sustained at 40 km/h or more for at least four hours combining with falling or blowing snow to cause visibilities to be reduced to 400 m or less, and this is dubbed the 4-4-4 rule." "Towering waves will develop during the windy blizzard conditions and there is the chance that Lake Ontario could see waves that are 6 metres (20 feet) tall in the centre of the lake, and waves as tall as 3 metres on the southern shores of Lake Huron and Lake Erie." We don't have to travel far back in time to find out about the largest blizzards ever experienced. The greatest number of lives lost was in the 1972 Iran Blizzard.  It began in February 1972 and lasted a week.  It dumped 3 to 5 metres of snow.  Four thousand people lost their lives.  We would travel back to 1888 when The Great Blizzard dropped 100 - 130 cm (40-50 in) of snow, had sustained winds of more than 72 km/h and produced snowdrifts in excess of 15 metres. This time also had the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888 in which the temperature allegedly dropped 100 degrees F in 24 hours. Most of the 235 casualties were children attempting to walk back home.  Some teachers kept the children in the one room schoolhouses for a couple of days, ringing bells to alert the community that they were all safe inside. An entire corner of a Nebraska school blew off due to the winds and school teacher Minnie Freeman tied her students together with twine and walked them through the storm to a nearby farmhouse where they took cover. The top storms of all times are HERE.  So many of them! A winter scene for today's image.

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Weekender Weather Alert

Wake Up on the Bright Side    I've been able to go out to the end of the driveway to pick up the newspaper in my bare feet until this past week.  Today looks like the end of that for me - I am not King Wenceslas (out on the feast of Stephen). The part that is interesting is our Great Lakes effects - northeast winds off Lake Ontario will pick up extra moisture resulting in higher snowfall totals.  The Weather Network brings science alive:  "The lake is like a hot tub." The lakes should be covered in ice rather than the current situation.  Jordan Harbour was mostly icebound yesterday - a small patch of ice shovelled clear and two people were skating.  There was a stream still travelling through from Lake Ontario. At Grimsby Beach, the ducks were standing on ice chunks rather than sitting in water.   "The best snowstorm at the beginning isn't the one that buries you, it's one that kind of reminds you we know where we live, we know what season we're in," Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada was quoted as saying. The 10 worst US storms in the 100 years of winter weather history included one from the Niagara region - the blizzard in Buffalo 2014 where Snowvember became an expression. That storm had up to 88 inches of snow. The frequently asked questions on lake effect snow include: how far does lake effect snow travel? which city gets the most lake effect snow? how far inland does lake effect snow go? why are lake effect snowflakes different? This is the video of the oncoming snow in 2014 in Buffalo HERE.   The picture of Buffalo being engulfed in the storm is clipped from that video.  The famous snow load in Keweenaw County Michigan during 1978-79 is documented below it - 25 feet.     There is so much weather news this weekend.  There is a massive disk of spinning ice in Westbrook, Maine.  It is 300 feet wide.  It was showcased on PBS last night. Next is the supermoon eclipse this weekend which will be easily visible for us (weather permitting).  It will happen on Sunday. So here's our February 2018 snow to get a sense of what the garden transforms into.  That summer picture is inviting in comparison.