So there’s some snow coming. Toronto’s looking at 15-25 cm (about a foot) of snow and ice pellets, Ottawa’s got 45-60 cm (about two feet) of snow coming, and I was planning on driving from Ottawa to Toronto tomorrow night. Awesome.

But what the snow does mean is that Environment Canada’s forecasters get to write the apocalyptic weather warnings that they do so well. My theory is that all of the senior meteorologists choose to stay the hell home when there’s big snow coming, so they get someone from the high-school newspaper to do the writing. Excerpts from tonight’s, italics mine:

A near-crippling snow storm with heavy snow and blowing snow as well as some ice pellets tonight and Sunday…

The developing low pressure system is moving across western Kentucky preceeded [sic] by a burgeoning area of moderate snow…

This storm track will place much of southern and eastern Ontario directly under the brunt of heavy snow…

A few claps of thunder along with bursts of very heavy snow are also likely.

The brunt of the main snow event will begin this evening in the southwest and rapidly envelop all regions east to Ottawa in the overnight hours. Copious amounts of snow as well as strong winds causing blowing snow are expected.

In addition freezing rain is possible especially near Lake Erie for a few hours overnight and Sunday morning as milder air pays a brief visit aloft. Ice pellets are also quite possible generally along and south of a line from Grand Bend to near Toronto and east to Cornwall.

This massive snow storm has the potential to cause near-paralyzing conditions as road travel on any unplowed streets may become next to impossible on Sunday.

There is a high degree of certainty with this storm as the concensus [sic] of weather model data is virtually unanimously forecasting this event.

Put down the thesaurus, guys! (I liked it better when the forecasts were written by military meteorologists.) Welp, at least I’ll get to try out my new snow tires and Sorel boots.