A grain of salt recommended...

I may be opening myself up for a little future embarassment here...but I've decided to post my Newswatch 9-2-5 forecast for tomorrow up on the blog. It's a dangerous thing to do. Why is it dangerous? Well, any weathercaster or forecaster will tell you how hard it is to nail a daily forecast let alone an hourly breakdown of what's ahead. Every night on Newswatch I use the "9-2-5" as a tool to give you an idea of what tomorrow will be like throughout the day. Just because rain is expected tomorrow doesn't mean it wil rain the entire day and tomorrow is a good example. Here's how I see tomorrow playing out...
















Now you'll have to take the above image with a grain of salt...and I also just noticed that the rain drops on my computer weather graphics don't appear too well when saved as a still image (sorry). I think we are likely to see some rain tomorrow morning and into the early afternoon. Our Futurecast here at CHEX shows a bit of clearing by 1pm until about 5pm where things may dry out a bit and a few sunny breaks are possible. By tomorrow night we could see a few more showers and there is the threat for some mild thunderstorm activity. So there you have it, an hourly breakdown for the busiest day of the International Dragon Boat Festival. I'll admit that I am still being very "optimistic" and not all of the computer models are in agreement but we did catch a break last weekend and I'm hoping for the same tomorrow. What you see above is my call and I'm sticking to it...let's just hope that Mother Nature cooperates. Have a great weekend!

Just Saying

It's Wednesday which means, as Canadians, it's time to start thinking about the weekend and this weekend looks to be a busy one. With a bunch of events set to take place outdoors a lot of folks are really concerned about getting rained out. Oh...and one of these events is a big one. Paddlers from across the globe are descending on the electric city as Peterborough hosts the International Dragon Boat Festival. As for the weather...see below:

















The forecast, at this point, is not looking great but there is hope. The image above is for very early Saturday morning (the overnight) and you can see a line of activity set to move through the region. So why is there hope? Let's step back in time to last weekend and the Peterborough Dragon Boat Festival where I called for rain and we ended up with a sunny afternoon. Yes, I blew that forecast (although I'm not alone) but we caught a break which is really a good thing. The active weather stayed to the south (Leamington) and the bulk of the rain fell to the north. Will that happen this weekend? It's still WAY too early to know for sure but I will say that the latest NAM image (above) is very similar to the "synoptic set-up" we saw going into last Saturday where we caught a break. You can cleary see this model show most of the rain to the north from that first are of low pressure riding high to the north and the cold fron looks to stay mainly to the south. Now we still saw rain last weekend but we also stole back a pretty decent afternoon from Mother Nature. While I'm not expecting a perfect weekend for the international races, if last weekend taught us anything...you never know. There is hope. Just saying.

What the heck is a downburst?

Over the weekend the town of Leamington Ontario was hit by a powerful storm which damaged buildings, toppled trees and left over 4000 residents without power. Earlier today, Environment Canada confirmed that some of the damage was caused by an F1 tornado. Most of us are pretty familiar with the kind of damage a tornado can leave in its wake. We see it in newspapers, on the news and in the movies (I personally love "Twister" by the way). What downed many of the trees in Leamington however was not a tornado but something many folks are completely unfamiliar with...a downburst.

A tornado, due to its turbulent nature, leaves a chaotic mess behind as it spins through a city or town. Debris is picked up by the vortex and thrown around in a seemingly random pattern. A downburst is very different. From the gound, downbursts seem to push everything over in generally the same direction, which is why many of the trees in Leamington were toppled to the east. Imagine a sinking column of cold dense air hitting the ground as it falls from the sky above. Once it hits the ground this air rapidly spreads from its point of impact and flows outward as a powerful gust of wind. How powerful? Just ask the folks in Leamington...the amount of debris left by this recent downburst will take weeks to clean up and the damage even longer to repair.

Using a few craft supplies I put together a video to help explain just what a downburst is. I've embedded it below...enjoy!