27 January 2015
I was granted my favourite type of birthday present in 2015, a snowstorm. A large low pressure system (a nor’easter named Juno) pushed into the freezing Canadian airmass. It has its own wiki page here because of the huge snowfall that fell on Boston. It was also notable because the New York mayor caused a minor panic due to the prediction of large accumulations there however New York narrowly missed the heaviest snow, and the mayor was criticized for causing panic. The fine line between snow and rain would just reach Halifax where the impacts were predicted to be less that for Boston.
There are beautiful satellite images of the storm here and here (let me know if these links goes down). The predicted snow amounts are shown below with Halifax in the 20 to 30 cm range as shown below.
The first snow began in the early hours in the morning. The radar image shows these light bands at 510 am below.
I struggled out of bed and set up a time-lapse to capture the arrival of the snow. The first attempt was too early but below shows the second and third sections when the snow arrived and beginning of accumulation.
My girlfriend at the time, Pili, and I walked across the Macdonald Bridge during the height of the storm and then around Halifax.
Below are a few pictures from our wander.
Halifax buses are pretty tough and continued to operate through this storm.
By the evening freezing rain and ice pellets arrived. The image below shows what this phase looked like on radar.
The time-lapse video below was taken during the night and is an attempt to show what ice pellet/freezing rain accumulation looks like.
And the video below is mainly to listen to the sound of the ice pellet phase of the storm. It is quite a peaceful sound really.
Link part 5 will come here if I remember.
youstorm 