Blizzards, cold weather to continue: welcome to winter in the Arctic

This seasonal weather chart from Environment Canada shows colder than normal temperatures expected this winter, January to March, for Nunavik and southern areas of the Baffin region in Nunavut. (IMAGE FROM ENVIRONMENT CANADA)

Winter weather conditions settled into Nunavut “with a bit of a vengeance” this year, says Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor, punctuated by a strong sweep of blizzards across two whole regions of the territory.

Nunavut’s first big storms of the year, which swept through Kitikmeot communities and most of the Kivalliq region, Jan. 6 to Jan. 9, were a sign of the “Arctic vortex” settling over Canada’s eastern Arctic, as it normally does, Proctor told Nunatsiaq News.

The number of blizzards seen this winter aren’t necessarily out of the ordinary, he said. The difference this year was that the usual patterns set in a little later and more slowly.

“It’s come in with a bit of a vengeance in the last little while, and that’s why we’ve seen such a strong sort of blizzard signal over the last week to two weeks in western portions of Nunavut,” Proctor said Jan. 14.

“That’s associated with the Arctic vortex establishing itself quite strongly.”

The vortex which is basically a mass of cold, dense air, usually noted as a large low-pressure area on weather charts.

As the mass settled in this month, it brought in a flow of cold air from “well across the North Pole,” coming straight down off the Canadian Arctic archipelago, “and sweeping through both the Kivalliq and the Kitikmeot,” Proctor said.

“In places like Cambridge Bay, the blizzard went on for a good three days, and probably could have gone on for much longer,” he said. “But we actually just exhausted the amount of snow that could have been picked up and carried by the winds.”

Those winds created snowdrifts as high as three metres in some parts of Cambridge Bay.

The storm system carried on a good 24 hours longer in Rankin Inlet and much of the Kivalliq region, where it eventually died down on Jan. 9.

“With this time of year, that cold vortex air tends to keep irradiating and cooling, because there’s nothing actively heating it. And underneath the vortexes, you tend to get a lot of clear skies,” Proctor said.

Blizzards tend to pick up at the edges of the air mass, largely in western portions of Nunavut, and that’s just what those regions of the territory can expect over the next two months.

“The flow pattern now in the atmosphere is very favourable for blizzards to continue, especially over western portions of the territory,” Proctor said, pointing to sections of the Kitikmeot and Kivalliq regions that have already borne the brunt of 2015’s first big storms.

Meanwhile, most of the territory can expect colder than normal temperatures until March.

“It’s setting out to be a very strong-looking vortex for the next couple of months, the way things are looking from our models at this point,” Proctor said from Environment Canada’s office for the Northern Region, in Edmonton.

“It usually means colder than normal temperatures, and usually it can be, typically more blizzards for the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions.”

Proctor’s office estimates a 40 to 60 per cent chance of below-normal temperatures over southern Baffin Island until March. More below-normal temperatures could come to the rest of Nunavut and Nunavik if the vortex shifts westward, Proctor said.

Temperatures in Nunavut and neighbouring Nunavik have been normal so far this winter, and this past fall, according to Environment Canada.

Nunavik’s most northerly communities, just opposite Hudson Strait from Baffin Island, were much snowier than usual throughout the fall.

“Some villages saw 100 per cent more than normal – so twice the normal precipitation,” from September through to November, said Simon Legault, a meteorologist with Environment Canada’s Quebec office. Some of it included rain in September, he said.

Conditions in communities around Ungava Bay were within norms. Others on the coast of Hudson Bay also experienced higher snow and rainfall than usual for the three months — amounting to as much as 50 per cent more than normal, Legault said.

Proctor, who also serves as a warning preparedness meteorologist, noted that January’s blizzards have been the biggest event of the winter so far.

“If we start looking at some of those extended periods of blowing snow, cold temperatures and really brutal wind chills, people need to be sure they take the necessary precautions before they get out onto the land,” he said. That includes keeping others informed of travel plans and taking SPOT beacons and satellite phones along for the trip, he said.

“It’s about being prepared, looking at the forecast, monitoring conditions and choosing those windows as best you can when things look like you can get out there,” — without facing “extreme challenges” in the weather, Proctor said.