Southern Ontario: Snowfall Outlook for Saturday, February 19, 2022

Forecast Discussion

An Alberta Clipper is set to slide across Southern Ontario tonight and continuing into Saturday morning. This will bring a brief, but an intense blast of heavy snow throughout Southwestern and Central Ontario combined with 60-80km/h wind gusts. The heavy snow and wind gusts will make for very poor visibility during the overnight hours and early Saturday morning leading to blowing snow and localized blizzard conditions. We expect the ‘true’ blizzard conditions will be contained to regions east of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay where wind gusts will be slightly stronger and more intense snowfall rates. Blowing snow will still be an issue almost everywhere as the heavy bands of snow move through early Saturday.

Actual accumulation associated with this event will be fairly insignificant since it only lasts for a few hours. The main concern will be the reduced visibility during that timeframe. The heaviest snowfall totals will be found through regions east of Lake Huron along with Central and Northeastern Ontario ranging from 6-12cm of snow. Localized areas could pick up close to 15cm particularly east of Georgian Bay through the Muskoka region. Surrounding regions including Eastern Ontario, London and Barrie will pick up around 5cm in total from this system. A few centimetres of snow can be expected in Deep Southwestern Ontario and through the Golden Horseshoe as this will be heavily reliant on the lake enhancement from Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

Conditions should improve later in the day on Saturday, however, some lake effect snow may linger through the snow belt. All that should dissipate by the late afternoon.