The Treacherous Beauty of Freezing Rain in Canada’s Capital
This morning, I woke up to a winter wonderland, a beautiful white fog, and all trees were covered in a layer of ice. It had started yesterday when Ottawa was hit by an ice storm, which brought down trees, generated power outages, and made driving treacherous.
It was caused by a collision of a mass of warm, wet air from the south and a solid wall of cold air stretching from Eastern Ontario into Quebec that refused to budge.
According to Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips, in Ottawa Citizen, the Canadian capital is a geographical sweet spot for freezing rain. The city is located in a valley, which means that cold air, which is always heavier and denser, sticks to the ground.
So when the lighter, warmer air from the south hits the heavy boulder of cold air, it can’t push it away and therefore has no other option than to ride over the top of the cold. The rain that then falls down becomes freezing rain. Ottawa gets this about 60 hours yearly, much more than most other Canadian cities.
The effect is dangerous and beautiful. Trees break down under the extra weight with the additional help of yesterday’s wind. Today, I saw fallen trees all over my neighborhood. And it also results in dangerous road conditions and broken power lines.
