General Timeline:
Today: Cloudy, chance for rain, but nothing major. SW to Southerly winds, 5-10 knots, gusting higher.
Tuesday night: Rain starts sometime in the dark hours. The current runs of the two main US models, NAM and GFS are agreeing that the front/major rain should start approaching sometime between midnight-3am. Winds will be southeasterly, 15-25 knots, gusting higher up to 35 knots, increasing as the front approaches. Wednesday morning: Lots of rain and wind. The models are showing the front slamming up on to Vancouver Island for a while until it comes through. Winds still southeasterly and will shift to SW/westerly when front comes through sometime during the early evening/late afternoon. Winds will be 25 knots sustained and gusting to 35-40 knots.
Wednesday night/Thursday morning: At this point, the rain should finally start to die down, though there will still be a chance of rain for a while. Once the front is through (sometime around 5-7pm Wednesday), the winds will decrease to 10-15 knots (and gusting to 25-30 or so) and be southwesterly.
Looks like you’re not out of the woods after this storm; there’s a first shortwave trough coming through Thursday/Friday; NAM seems to develop a little shortwave trough a bit more than the GFS, and this will bring back southwesterly winds with 15-20+ knot winds on Thursday (gusting to 25+). Winds will be westerly and near 15 knots sustained on Friday morning after this shortwave comes through. On Friday afternoon/evening, the next storm is coming through and winds will shift back to westerly/southwesterly in advance of it; models indicate that in between the shortwave and the next big low, the winds probably won’t get below 10 knots. Right now, the two models agree generally on its timing, though the next few model runs should give us a bit better indication.
Forecaster Maroon