‘You’re not even going to see the hood of your car’: Winter storm continues to blanket GTA

Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, provides an update on weather conditions and what to expect as the day progresses.

Many residents around the GTA are hunkering down for the day, after waking up to a blanket of snow, which at least one expert warns will continue to come down for the rest of the day.

Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips said the region can expect 20 to 40 centimetres of snow on Sunday.

• LIVE UPDATES: Winter storm set to dump up to 40 cm of snow across GTA

He explains that being situated near Lake Ontario brings air across from places like Oswego or Syracuse New York state into the region. This will add an extra 10 to 20 centimetres of snow to the “locally produced” snow.

“It’s going to be one of the snowiest moments of the entire winter, for sure,” he told CP24 on Sunday. “We already have 20 cm sitting on the ground before the first flakes arrived.”

The snow started coming down at around 3 a.m. Sunday morning and picked up at around 8 a.m., Phillips said, warning that visibility is expected to get worse.

“You’re not even going to see the hood of your car under those blinding kinds of situations,” he said. “It’s very rare that you see in Toronto, a winter storm warning. You maybe have a snow warning, you might have a cold warning, but to get all of them in one wrap up in a ball of misery is rare.”

Phillips added that it’s also rare for Toronto to lead the province when it comes to the heaviest amount of snow from a storm that’s affecting most of Ontario, which he credits to the lake effect.

When winds start moving from the northeast, the snow piles up on the western end of Lake Ontario, in places like Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton.

So far this winter season, Toronto and the surrounding areas have received 105 cm of snow, according to Phillips, who said “that’s almost within 10 cm of a year-round snow, and we still have half a winter to go.”

He expects that it will be another two weeks or so before we start seeing warmer, seasonal temperatures that can start thawing the snow.