Little to no consensus amongst weather models for Ontario's Family Day storm

Saturday, February 15, 2014, 11:14 AM -

After record breaking temperatures gripped parts of the region this week, residents in southern Ontario experienced a return to seasonal conditions on Friday, with a fall back to more seasonal temperatures on Saturday.

Country-wide, B.C. is in the sights of a series of lows bringing damaging winds of up to 100 km/h through the weekend, while Atlantic Canada is bracing for yet another winter blast as a powerful system moves through.

In northern Ontario, winter storm warnings were issued on Thursday with over 20 cm of snow recorded in some places, but are there any details about the next system to hit the south of the province?

POTENTIAL FAMILY DAY STORM

The forecast next week holds both good news and bad news.

"Each forecast weather model we use as a tool to create our forecasts are indicating a system moving through southern Ontario for Family Day Monday into Tuesday," says Vettese. "However, at this point, there is little to no consensus amongst the models with regards to timing, precipitation type or snowfall amounts. It is certainly a difficult forecast and will be refined several more times over the weekend."

The good news is that next week's temperatures should be much closer to seasonal which means relatively speaking it is going to feel a lot milder throughout most of the week.

"Details with specific timing and precipitation types will become more clear once we head into the weekend," adds Monica Vaswani, another meteorologist at The Weather Network. "This means that it is best to keep an eye on the forecast especially in the days immediately leading up to the event."

EXTREME WEATHER: The first six weeks of 2014 have been brutal

According to Vaswani, it is much too early to pin down snowfall amounts, or potential rainfall amounts, for that matter.

"Sometimes, like the snowstorm southern Ontarians experience on February 5, we have good model agreement and confidence in an unfolding weather situation in the long range," says Vettese. "The February 5 snowstorm was one such example as there was good model consensus and the pattern was panning out just as forecasted. With the Monday-Tuesday system coming up, we’re seeing the opposite."

These details will become much more clear in the coming days, so stay tuned.

FOLLOW ACTIVE WEATHER: Visit the Alerts section of the website