An intensifying Colorado low will bring significant rainfall and potentially damaging winds to southwestern Ontario Tuesday and Wednesday.
Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson says a special weather statement in effect includes Sarnia-Lambton.
"It looks like rainfall is going to be the main concern from this system in the southwest, and also the possibility of some thunderstorm activity," says Coulson. "In fact, there's already a fairly vigorous area of thunderstorms that we're tracking in parts of Illinois, Indiana and western Ohio. Some of that activity may push into the Sarnia-Lambton area this evening."
Coulson says 15 mm to 30 mm of rain is expected, mostly tonight, with locally higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.
He says a sharp Arctic cold front will blast across the region Wednesday morning with strong west-southwesterly winds gusting as high as 85 km/h in some areas.
Isolated power outages are possible.
Coulson says another system from the U.S. Midwest later this week could bring some accumulating snow to Sarnia-Lambton.
"Initially as it starts to fall it likely will be melting a fair amount, but with the ground starting to be a bit colder as cold air really comes in Thursday night, we may actually see some accumulation from it during the day on Friday," he says.
Coulson says this spring has been dominated so far by cold air masses and the colder-than-normal pattern is expected to continue through at least the middle part of April possibly more than that.