Another Weekend, Another Winter Storm

Valid: SAT, JAN 29, 2022

What comes after 5 days of work???? A winter storm. PEI is in the bullseye for yet another large blast of winter weather and once again, it is on a Saturday. We will be looking at significant snow, and some areas of the province will be looking at ice pellets, freezing rain and rain on the tail end of the system.

TIMING:

Friday night into early Saturday morning, we will see a light dusting across the province. The ‘real’ system starts impacting the entire province shortly after daybreak on Saturday. The heaviest bands of snow will arrive during the afternoon hours and by evening, the majority of the snow from this system will be down across the Island.

We should see a brief change over from snow to sleet in the evening on Saturday and Queens county could also see a little bit of freezing rain. Kings County can expect to see the snow change over to sleet and then to rain by early evening, and the rain may push across to Queens and Prince counties briefly around midnight Saturday.

TOTAL AMOUNTS ACROSS THE PROVINCE:

The below accumulations are what we can expect to see on Saturday:

SNOWFALL

Prince County – 20-30 cm (higher accumulations closer to Queens County)

Queens County – 30-40 cm

Kings County – 20-30 cm (areas around Wood Island may only see 15-20cm)

RAINFALL

Prince County – 1-5mm

Queens County – 1-5 mm

Kings County – 5-10mm

WIND: Winds will be a factor with this system. It is a fairly fast moving system and what that means is the higher wind gusts will be over a shorter period of time. Winds will be from the North / Northeast and will gradually increase throughout Saturday morning and should start diminishing late Saturday night. The stronger winds will occur between 2pm and 8pm Saturday. Overall, wind should be 40-60 km/h with gusts of 70-90 km/h during the late afternoon hours. Prince County could see some wind gusts reaching close to 100km/h near supper time on Saturday.

TEMPERATURE: We should be starting the day on Saturday with temperatures around the -5 to -10 C range and as the day progresses we will see those temperatures rise above freezing to around 2-4 C by Saturday evening and then temperatures will again decrease to -5 to -10 C area by noon time on Sunday.

Any shift in the front could vary the precipitation types and quantities. We will continue to monitor this system and keep you updated with any significant changes.

Winds and snow will cause white out and hazardous driving conditions during Saturday. Be prepared for power outages. Please exercise caution if you are on the roads. Please stay home unless absolutely necessary. Stranded vehicles are a hazard to those in them as well as emergency and road crews. If you do not need to drive, stay home and eat chips. Always adhere to the recommendations of the RCMP and PEI Public Safety.

As always, be safe and let us know what you are experiencing in your areas.

Storm chip Probability: 100%

IWPE Team (Mike S, Harry S)