Elsewhere in Weather News: March 23rd, 2013

Damaging Tornadoes Touch Down Across the World

Tornadic activity was experienced across the globe this past week, affecting countries from Bangladesh to Australia and even China.

Australian tornado

Capture of the Doppler Radar velocity at the time of the tornado (area of dark blue vs. red). (Source: BoM/ @vicstormchasers)

In Australia on March 21st , at least two powerful tornadoes touched down on the border of Victoria and New South Wales, ripping through more than a half-dozen towns lying along the Murray River. The strongest twister, with an estimated F2 rating on the Fujita scale, caused major damage to the towns it swept through – tearing roofs off their structures, throwing cars around and snapping power lines. In total, 20 people were injured and two had to be airlifted to hospital. Thankfully no deaths were associated with this tornado outbreak. A deep low pressure system responsible for spawning these tornadoes lay just off Tasmanian coast with a cold front stretching up into Australia.

Video of the Australian tornado dangerously close up. Power flashes and debris can clearly be seen flying through the air. (Source: Daniel Clarke)

The tornado that touched down in Bangladesh on Friday, March 22nd also caused a fair amount of damage to a few rural eastern Bangladesh towns. The twister was on the ground for about 15 minutes but it is not yet known what the strength of the tornado was estimated to be. At least 100 injuries and 20 deaths were reported as a result of this tornado.

The people of Bangladesh are more susceptible to injury and death from tornadoes since finding a safe haven from them is not as easy as heading down to a basement to take cover. Most houses in the area are built out of mud and don’t have a sturdy structure, making it difficult to escape when residents find themselves in the path of a twister. Tornadoes are common in Bangladesh from March to late April before they transition into the monsoon season.

Guangdong, a southern province of China, was also in the crosshairs of severe weather this week. A supercell produced egg size hail accompanied with a tornado that made its way through the city of Dongguan (pop. 400,000). Significant damage occurred – many buildings collapsed and the storm even overturned a ferry offshore. These Chinese storms were the deadliest storms of the week, accounting for 24 deaths and over 200 injuries.

China egg-size hail

Hail the size of eggs covers the ground in Dongguan, China. (Souce: I.B. Times)

Benign Weather Continues

We’ll continue to chip away at the cold air and push towards seasonal temperatures over the next few days as the ridge of high pressure anchored over the province slowly weakens.

Friday

Mainly sunny. Increasing cloud overnight.
-7°C to -3°C / -14°C
Saturday

A mix of sun and cloud.
-3°C / -12°C
Sunday

Becoming sunnier than cloudy.
-3°C / -13°C

We’ll see mainly sunny skies today as temperatures climb from anywhere to -7°C on the northwest side of the city to closer to about -3°C downtown. Some cloud will start pushing into the Red River Valley from the east tonight which will limit our overnight low to only around -14°C instead of dropping back into the -20’s again. Saturday will see more cloud than sun with temperatures climbing to around -3°C and dropping to slightly below -10°C Saturday night. The clouds will start to break up on Sunday; we’ll likely see more sun than cloud through the late morning and afternoon period as the temperature climbs up to around -4°C yet again.

Long Range

Current indications for the next week or so are that not much will change; no large systems are in our forecast which will certainly be a help to the flooding situation. Days just below zero combined with the strong March sun and no additional precipitation are excellent for helping with the potential flood situation by melting the existing snowpack at a gradual pace.

Sunny & Climbing Towards Seasonal

Winnipeg & the Red River Valley will spend the rest of the week struggling back towards seasonal temperatures as an abnormal mid-March blast of cold, Arctic air has left us significantly below our normal temperature of around 0°C.

Wednesday

Mainly sunny.
-10°C / -21°C
Thursday

Mainly sunny.
-7°C / -16°C
Friday

Mainly sunny.
-5°C / -10°C

Very little is expected to change over our region through the next three days. The low that brought the blizzard to Southern Manitoba at the beginning of this week has stalled out over Ontario and while another low will be deepening in Alberta, everything will be somewhat “stuck” and we’ll remain under the ridge of high pressure between the two systems. With little motion and us sitting right under a ridge, winds will remain light and very little temperature advection will be occurring aloft. The upside to this situation is that we’ll see plenty of sun through the remainder of the week, and since that sun is now a late-March sun, it will be able to slowly work at warming up that big mass of air stuck over us. Thanks to this, temperatures will slowly rise through the week back towards more seasonal temperatures. While it may not be as warm as we’d like, you can at least get out there and enjoy the sunshine, light winds, and feel that sun working!

The Weekend

At this point, the weekend looks fairly benign: temperatures will climb close to 0°C for daytime highs and there’s a chance we’ll see some light snow on Saturday or Sunday. At this point, no significant storm system is expected, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled! Hopefully we’ll be able to close the book on this winter very soon.

Not a Great Start to the Week

This week hasn’t exactly started out on a pleasant note as you’re no doubt aware. Unfortunately, conditions won’t improve much after today.

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Predicted conditions early Monday afternoon (courtesy: College of Dupage NAM model)
Monday
image
Snow ending. Blowing snow.
-12°C / -21°C

Monday

Snow and heavy blowing snow is currently ongoing in parts of the Red River Valley. This snow and blowing snow will gradually taper off today, but not before snow totals of 10 to 20cm have piled up across Southern Manitoba. High temperatures today won’t be very pleasant, nor will low temperatures tonight. Overall a horrible start to the week.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday
image
Mainly cloudy
-12°C / -22°C
Wednesday
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Mix of sun and cloud
-11°C / -21°C

Conditions on Tuesday will see little improvement from Monday. Highs will once again be very cold by March standards. Luckily no more precipitation is expected on Tuesday (except maybe a flurry here or there), which is at least something to be thankful for. Wednesday will again be a seasonably cold day, with no weather of note.

Long Range

The long range is…you guessed it, ugly. At this point the GFS model (a longer range model) doesn’t show us even getting to the freezing mark in the next ten days. While this may be an overly pessimistic forecast, it is certainly possible given the extensive snowpack over the Eastern Prairies. We can only hope it is wrong, and perhaps we’ll see at least some melting, however minimal, by the weekend.