Markham, ON - The first winter storm of the season is now tapering off the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and now heading to its next target in the Atlantic Maritime, where it will provide the locale some rain, freezing rain, ice pellets, snow, et cetera.

In the GTA, the precipitation started on Wednesday as rain as a result from the leading edge of the warm front, and the warm air provided by the long-departed system from Tuesday. The warm front presistantly hit the GTA for over 24 hours, dumping about 35 mm of rain before changing into ice pellets. At around 8:30 PM EST, the rain switched over to ice pellets in Markham, and not long after that, it switched to wet snow accumulating trace of a centimetre. However, the precipitation quickly swapped back to ice pellets and continued overnight and into the early morning. We had anticipated the ice pellets to change over to snow at around midnight, but it did not. The upper level temperatures are just too warm to sustain snow. Environment Canada also issued Winter Storm Warning and Snowfall Warning to Southern Ontario, warning residents to the northern edge of Southern Ontario (i.e. Barrie) that 10 to 20 cm of snow is possible; and to the southern edge (i.e. Markham; Toronto) that 5 to 15 cm of snow possible on top of the 2 cm accumulated sleet. It caused major problems of the morning commute, and according to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), accident rate was at 1 accident per minute. The total sleet accumulation totaled at around 2 to 5 cm, depending where you are. As the temperature continues to fall consistently, the ice pellets finally changes to snow as of 9 AM EST. It started snowing moderately, then lightly throughout the afternoon. In Markham, the snow fell consistently and did not stop until recently at around 6:30 PM EST. The snowfall amount varied depending where you live. Due to majority of the snow was anticipated to fall yesterday overnight, but instead, it sleeted, thus, we have a much less snow accumulation. In Markham, the total accumulation was at around 7 to 10 cm, depending on where you live within Markham, and in Toronto, the accumulation was at 3 to 8 cm, again, depends on where you live.

Tomorrow is going to frigidly cold, standing at around -4 C as our daytime high, with tonight overnight lows in the negative double digits for some areas. For Markham, tonight's overnight low stands at -9 C, but with the wind, wind chill value could easily go below -20 C.

I did take some pictures of how this winter storm pounded the GTA, but with a missing bluetooth, it's impossible to find it... let see if I can find it...