Saturday storms ahead for parts of southern Ontario
Digital Reporter
Saturday, August 16, 2014, 9:13 AM - A stormy night in northwestern Ontario Friday, and on Saturday, it looks like southern Ontario is in for its own bout with heavy rain and thunder.
"A low pressure system is forecast to develop through central Ontario ... with its associated cold front to trigger a line of severe storms [Saturday] across southern Ontario," Weather Network meteorologist Brad Rousseau said Friday night.
Forecasters say the biggest risk of storms will be centred around Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, which is where supercells are likely to develop.
"But sheer orientation to the front suggests things will congeal into a messy line rather quickly," Rousseau says.
Those areas are also where the heaviest rain is expected to fall, although areas outside that zone, like the Greater Toronto Area, may still see locally heavy amounts in thunderstorms.
Some models suggest a chance of "training" storms - a quick succession of storms one after the other, like railway cars on a train - mainly in the southwest, depending on how fast the cold front moves southeast.
But storm or shine, many Ontarians will be wondering whether the weekend, and the week to come, will see a repeat of the mid-to-high teens temperatures that plagued the province over the past week.
Toronto, for example, recorded a high of 18oC at Pearson Airport on Thursday. The seasonal normal is 25oC.
Weather Network meteorologist Monica Vaswani says don't expect a full return to normal just yet: The weekend, and part of the work week, will be marked by weather in the low 20s for the most part, which is still noticeably below seasonal.
"Very comfortable weather, but not the scorching beach weather that many people would hope for the last couple of weeks of summer," she said Saturday morning.
Vaswani says while the overall pattern will be below seasonal, real temperatures will vary, with some parts of the province seeing mid-20s while others, like the north, will see daytime maximums in the high teens.
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