Tag: Environment Canada

Weather – Interesting day or so ahead

Weather - Interesting day or so ahead

I’m a weather geek and enjoy surfing various forecast services. My primary soures are Environment Canada, The Weather Network, and the US National Weather Service. Intellicast and the Weather Underground provide useful information. I ignore The Weather Channel – too much breathless hype for me. I review the available forecast packages then make an educated guess at what will happen.

Today we had some sun and it warmed up to about 4 degrees, which melted some of the snowpack. Tomorrow morning we have a chance at snow and/or freezing drizzle which will make for an interesting drive. Dropping Stella at the vet for some dental cleaning, she’s lost five pounds over several months and about 1 1/2 since her last visit a month ago. Her standard weight is about 35 or 36 so it’s concerning.

Tomorrow afternoon and evening we could see heavy rain, possibly an inch or more. That’s a lot of rain to fall on our ten inches or so of snow. We might get a rumble of thunder. Then a cold front sweeps through during Thursday night bringing colder temperatures and winds possibly gusting to 80 kilometers per hour (around 50 mph). May our and our neighbours’ trees stay where and as they are.

I’m not Panicky or Freaking Out, weather like this is a part of life and of living in this part of the world. It’s good to be knowledgeable and prepared.

Weather data collection

Weather data collection

I like to track weather and climate data. Though my instruments are non-precision they help me track daily high and low temperature, rainfall, and snowfall. I write the numbers on the calendar then transfer them to a spreadsheet, in which I keep the data in tabular and graphical form. It’s a cool way to see what happens during the month, year, and over the years since I have lived in Dresden. It’s also neat to compare against climate data collected here by Environment Canada during the years 1971-2000.

Here is the graph for January through yesterday morning. The red line is the high, the roughly corresponding line is the low, green = rain and lighted blue = snow. Up and down the temperatures have gone. Despite that big dip our average low of -6 is three degrees warmer than the historic average of -9. Another big dip looms in the next few days, which should bring that average low more in line with the historic data. The green spike is a day of rain, and we have already exceeded the average snowfall by a comfortable margin.