February 2007 North America Blizzard - Storm Track

Storm Track

From February 10 to 11, a low pressure system developed near the Rockies and moved towards the Great Plains of the United States. It later tracked across the Ohio Valley and merged with a new coastal low. It then moved over eastern Quebec on Valentine's Day before exiting northeastern Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador on February 16. It dumped over six inches (15 cm) of snow across numerous areas from Iowa to New Brunswick, including major cities such as Akron, Detroit, Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Springfield, Peoria, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Dayton, Toledo, Cincinnati, London, Hamilton, the Niagara Region, Toronto, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Trois-Rivières, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Windsor, Syracuse and Albany. This also includes areas such as Northern Oswego County, New York, which received historic lake effect snowfall amounts in the week prior to the storm.

In addition to the general snowfall, snow squalls coming from Lake Ontario gave local amounts of over 2 feet (600 mm) of snow near the Hamilton and Niagara regions, where 1 foot (0.30 m) of snow had already fallen on February 13.

Heavy ice amounts fell for locations along Interstate 95 from Maine to Virginia and west towards southern Ohio and Indiana. Ice was expected for parts of the Canadian Maritimes.

This storm became impressive as it moved into the Ohio Valley during the 13th. However as additional energy moved into the eastern part of the country, a new area of low pressure developed near the North Carolina coast late on the 13th. This allowed mainly light snow to overspread the region from south to north during the early morning hours of the 13th. Low pressure developed in the southern Plains on Monday the 12th as a cold front pushed southward across the Northeast. By Tuesday the 13th, the storm moved eastward across the lower Mississippi Valley while the cold front became stationary in the Carolinas. On the night of the 13th, the primary low moved into the far eastern Ohio Valley while a secondary low developed on the stalled front in the Carolinas. During the day on Wednesday the 14th, this secondary low strengthened rapidly and moved northeastward along the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts while the primary low dissipated in the central Appalachians. By Thursday the 15th, the storm had moved into eastern Canada.