Hey Guys just doing some research tonight and finding some very odd readings coming from Pearson airport. Snowfall is not exactly what I expected. I'm quite close to Pearson airport (15 minutes) but am finding my snowfall obs quite different from them. I find mine very similar to the downtown weather reporting station at U of T. Very odd to see, but the stations while close have different snowfall in different months my large margins. For example, while Pearson's average snowfall per year would be 120 cm, the U of T station is more like 135 cm!
Do any of you find odd readings and such from your local weather stations?
Pearson also frequently records visibility in snowfall to more than it usually is, something that the island airport does better. Sometimes it will record small amounts of snow, when I haven't seen any flakes in the air at all.
Our famous January 1999 when we called in the army, Pearson only recorded 70 cm I believe. However the U of T station had 119 cm that month, including 38 on January 2nd.
You raise a good point, Max. Personally, I like to use the downtown Toronto snowfall data in describing Toronto's weather. It has a long history (over 160 years) and some of the most important snowfall events have been recorded at the downtown station, like the January 1999 snow blitz.
By the way, I was very surprised at the low snowfall reading of only 5.7 cm for Pearson Airport back on March 1st of this year. By contrast, the downtown station recorded 10.6 cm, much closer to reality.
Hey Guys just doing some research tonight and finding some very odd readings coming from Pearson airport. Snowfall is not exactly what I expected. I'm quite close to Pearson airport (15 minutes) but am finding my snowfall obs quite different from them. I find mine very similar to the downtown weather reporting station at U of T. Very odd to see, but the stations while close have different snowfall in different months my large margins. For example, while Pearson's average snowfall per year would be 120 cm, the U of T station is more like 135 cm!
Do any of you find odd readings and such from your local weather stations?
Widely divergent readings of temperature and precipitation are common in station data from the Saanich Peninsula (Greater Victoria), BC. Precipitation on the shores of Juan de Fuca Strait in Victoria and Oak Bay averages less than 610 mm yearly, while the corresponding figure for the airport 25 km away near Sidney is more than 880 mm. The Strait exerts a marine influence strong enough to make winter daily average temperatures more than a degree warmer than at the airport and allow a yearly average of only 14 days with frost, compared with 53 at the airport. Some of the Peninsula's colder microclimates are almost twice as frost-prone as the airport.
At the airport's latitude, there is a noticeable precipitation gradient from east to west. It's usually drier and less snowy in Sidney than in the Patricia Bay/Ardmore area 5 or 6 km to the west. On a few occasions we has left our Sidney home, all green grass and colourful flowerbeds, to visit friends in snow-covered Ardmore.
-Tony
Interesting question. As I explain in full details in my weather blog, I also discovered that the micro climate here at Toronto East York (Sunnybrook Park) brings more snowfall compared to Pearson. For example, the March 7-8 snowstorm only brought 15 cm of snow at Pearson while here at East York, we received 27 cm!!! This is not uncommon since weather conditions can change even within a 30 km span. Therefore, I often rely on my Davis weather station readings than at Pearson.
Read my whole blog about snowfall and world record snowfall measurements in my blog at:
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