Nova Scotia·Weather

Southwest Nova Scotia likely to be hardest hit by coming winter storm

CBC meteorologist Ryan Snoddon says there's snow in the forecast for areas of Nova Scotia on Saturday night and into Sunday, as a system tracks through the region.

And there may be even more snowy weather on the way next week

Ryan Snoddon · CBC News · Posted: Mar 01, 2019 3:53 PM EST | Last Updated: March 2, 2019

Parts of Nova Scotia are under snowfall warnings and winter storm warnings this weekend. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)

Every once in a while we have a system track through the region that really brings in my grey hairs. This is turning out to be one of those systems.

CBC Nova Scotia Storm Centre

The low tracking south of Nova Scotia will spread snow across the province this afternoon, before ramping up this evening and overnight. That snow will continue right into Sunday morning, before tapering off west to east across the province on Sunday.

The track will be key

In terms of snowfall totals, this is a challenging one. There's a very tight snow gradient, which means a track change of just 50 to 100 kilometres is all the difference in seeing a little bit of snow or significant snow in your backyard.

A case in point is the forecast model guidance suddenly shifted north with a track closer to Nova Scotia on Friday and as a result higher totals were added to the forecast. Now, we're seeing a slight shift back south again with the expected track, which means we'll likely end up on the lower end of the totals we were talking about yesterday.

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With that said, it's still looking like a snowfall of 10 to 20 centimetres for much of Nova Scotia, including Halifax. Areas in the southwest now have the best chance of seeing totals in the 20 to 30-centimetre range and amounts could be higher locally. Environment Canada has issued snowfall warnings and winter storm warnings for parts of the province.

As you'll see in the timeline below, winds don't appear to be a major issue with this system. However, we'll certainly see some blowing and drifting Saturday night and into Sunday morning as wind gusts reach 50 to 60 km/h along the Atlantic coastline.

Updated Timeline for this afternoon, tonight & Sunday.<br>Snow tracks in this afternoon, arriving in the Halifax region late afternoon/early evening. Steadiest snow this evening and overnight. <br>Snow ending and skies clearing from west to east through Sunday.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NSStorm?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NSStorm</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBStorm?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBStorm</a> <a href="https://t.co/C1YCi8XwoA">pic.twitter.com/C1YCi8XwoA</a>
—@ryansnoddon

Thankfully with the timing of this event, most people can stay home and hunker down on Saturday night and then do some shovelling and clean up on Sunday.

The next one

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the system moving in for Monday. That low will move in with accumulating snow through Monday morning, before mixing through ice pellets and freezing rain to rain through Monday afternoon. Travel across the region will certainly be impacted.