Environment and Climate Change Canada warns areas near Lake Erie will be hit by a massive winter storm expected to bring a weekend of misery to 30 U.S. states.
Some American forecasters call the system, stretching across much of the continental U.S., "a generational storm."
"It's a very, very large system," said Meteorologist Eric Thomlinson. "It will intensify as it taps into that Gulf [of Mexico] moisture, and with all of that moisture that it's picking up, it has quite a large area of precipitation, and it's the northern edge that could impact us."
Americans are bracing for extreme cold, rain, freezing rain, and snow.
Thomlinson doubts the impacts in Southwestern Ontario will be as dramatic, but said models suggest bitter cold for Friday and Saturday, and snow on Sunday.
"Seeing as the system is passing south of Ontario, areas closer to Lake Erie, as well as the Greater Toronto Area, those are the areas that we're really watching for those higher snowfall amounts," said Thomlinson, suggesting the Windsor and Chatham-Kent areas could see 10 cm of snow.
He cautioned that the models are still uncertain, although the agency will have a better picture of the potential impacts on Friday.
What those models tell him now is that temperatures overnight on Friday will drop to -21 C.
Heading into early next week, Thomlinson said the temperature will increase, but only slightly. He predicted daytime highs between -5 C and -10 C.
