Hello, everyone! It’s nice to meet you. I’m Connor Mockett, a new columnist for the North Dundas Times. My columns will specifically focus on the weather, whether it be talking about events that have happened in the weeks before the paper is released, or talking about potential weather events that could happen in the future. And in the summer months, I’ll talk about my storm chasing adventures, because I do chase a lot in the summer!
Some of you may already know my name. Yes, I am the same Connor from the “Connor Mockett, Storm Chaser & Photographer” page on Facebook. For those of you that don’t know me, let me further introduce myself.
I’m based out of the wonderful town of Winchester in Eastern Ontario, and I’ve lived here for my entire life. I’m an old man at the age of 22. I’m completely self taught in terms of all my knowledge about Meteorology and storm chasing, which I started teaching myself around 2018, when I really started to get into the weather and storm chasing. My first storm chase was actually in 2015, when a tornado warned supercell came through the Winchester area in July (thank you Dad for being my driver that day). I’ve traveled across the Country of Canada to chase storms, whether it be all the way to Alberta both in 2021 and 2022, or to Nova Scotia last September to chase the historic Hurricane Fiona. Enough about me though, let’s talk about the weather.
As I’m writing this, we just had a minor snowstorm move through the Eastern Ontario region on Friday, January 20. Anywhere from 8cm to 14cm fell across the region, specifically 9cm in Winchester. Most of it fell in the middle of the night, however snow continued throughout most of the day. It was just light and fine snow during the day, and didn’t accumulate too much more.
The next snow opportunity will be Sunday, January 22, where it looks like 4-8cm is expected as the region will get grazed by the northern tip of a Colorado Low. This one will not be the main problem of the week though, as another snowstorm is certain to happen on Wednesday the 25th and Thursday the 26th.
The mid-week storm looks like it’ll be a doozy, with 15-30cm potentially on the way as I type this on the 21st. It also looks like wind will once again be a factor, with models hinting at wind gusts potentially up to 60-70km/h during the heaviest snowfall, which would create some huge snow drifts and awful travel conditions. By the time you’re reading this, you’ll already know how this storm played out, so I’m excited to see what happens with this one.
Temperature wise, the rest of January will be above normal, with a few opportunities for above 0°C daytime highs. The beginning of February will be a different story, as very cold air from Northern Canada will stream down to Eastern Ontario (and the rest of the province for that matter), making daytime highs very cold, and overnight lows extremely cold, with windchills being even worse.
In my next column, I’ll go over what happened with the upcoming snow storms, temperatures, and anything else that happens weather wise. You’ll hear from me in a couple weeks, but until then, good luck with the snow and cold!
