Repeat of Last Week with Heavy Rain, Flooding Concerns, and Flash Freeze Risk in the Maritimes for Wednesday and Thursday
/In what seems to be a do-over from last week, the Maritimes is once again looking at a heavy rainfall event followed by a steep drop in temperatures to below freezing. The change from last week, however, will be in the areas that receive the most rain. While last week’s rainstorm greatly impacted the Atlantic Coast and Eastern Nova Scotia, this week’s target is Western Nova Scotia and Southern New Brunswick.
Scattered showers are expected to move into and across the region through the morning hours Wednesday ahead of the first band of rainfall which starts to push its way into the Maritimes from the southwest in the afternoon. The rain from this band will be steady and light and it is expected to stop short of Antigonish and Eastern Guysborough Counties, as well as Cape Breton Island, where on-and-off light rain should fall starting in the evening. While most of the region will see light precipitation, the rain will be moderate to heavy for much of the event along the Fundy Coast which sets the area up to be the hardest hit from this storm with 75-100mm of rain through Thursday.
A second, stronger band of precipitation will quickly overtake the initial round of rain from the afternoon, and the entire system will become much more organized overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning. It’s at that point that we expect the heaviest rain to fall over a large swath of Southern New Brunswick and Western Nova Scotia. At times, rainfall rates could be approaching 10mm/hr in areas along the Fundy Coast, and this will quickly bring rainfall totals towards the 100mm mark.
The ground is still frozen across most of the Maritimes which greatly reduces the ability for the rain to be absorbed and when mixed with the warm temperatures, areas with existing snow will see an increase in melting, further adding to localized flooding risk. Luckily with this storm, the heaviest rain is expected in areas with little to no existing snowpack so additional melting should not exacerbate the flooding risk.
This heavier precipitation will be taking place along a sharp cold front that will cause temperatures to once again plummet to below freezing with the passing of the rain and we’ll see a transition to some light snow across the Maritimes before the storm completely exits the region by the mid-afternoon on Thursday. As a result, there is once again the risk of a flash freeze across much of the region Thursday morning.
Strong wind gusts will also be a concern with this storm. Widespread gusts of 60-90km/h can be expected in PEI, New Brunswick, and much of Nova Scotia with the passage of the second band of precipitation beginning overnight Wednesday and continuing through Thursday morning. The Fundy Coast and Western Nova Scotia, as well as more exposed coastal areas of mainland Nova Scotia could see wind gusts up to 100km/hr.
