Potentially Historic Ice Storm With Significant Impacts Beginning Overnight Tonight

A large storm, stretching all the way down to Texas, is expected to bring crippling amounts of snow and ice starting overnight tonight and continuing straight to Saturday morning. The storm has already started bringing rain across the province which will transition over to freezing rain for most regions overnight as the temperature falls and hovers around the freezing mark. The freezing rain will continue to fall throughout the day tomorrow before tapering off Saturday morning. Some of the province, particularly Cumberland County and northern parts of both Inverness and Victoria Counties, will escape the freezing rain threat and precipitation will fall as snow with amounts up to 30cm possible. On the other hand, much of the Southern Shore, including Yarmouth and Liverpool, will see a bit of freezing rain, but the precipitation will mostly fall as rain.

The threat of major ice accretion of over 25mm (1”) exists in a large swath from Digby and the Annapolis Valley, across to Antigonish in the Highlands, and through Cape Breton up to Sydney. The Halifax area should expect closer to 25mm of ice accretion on surfaces. This amount of ice will be more than enough to bring down tree limbs and powerlines and widespread, long-term power outages are entirely possible throughout the entire province. These issues will be further compounded by having wind gusts of up to 60 km/h throughout the duration of the storm. These types of ice events are very dependent on the temperature and usually a difference of a single degree is enough to change the type of precipitation falling, however the general consensus of the major weather models, as well as what this storm as already done in the United States, suggests that this will be a predominantly freezing rain event.

There is considerable agreement between weather models that this be the strongest ice storm the province has seen in quite some time. Please ensure that you have all of your essentials ready ahead of this storm. An Ice Storm Preparation article will be posted this evening and we will be providing updates throughout the duration of the storm, including a possible livestream.