Southwestern Ontarians may not have to worry about getting soaked by the remains of Hurricane Florence.
Forecasters from across North America have been tracking the deadly storm for over a week, and it finally made landfall early Friday morning on the North Carolina coast. With Florence weakening as it moved over land, and being downgraded to a tropical depression as of Sunday afternoon, the areas of heavy rain are becoming scattered and less defined.
Environment Canada is joining its U.S. counterparts at the National Weather Service in seeing where the remnants of Florence will go next. But at this point, severe weather specialist Steve Knott tells BlackburnNews.com that as of now, our region won't be affected much.
"We're keeping an eye on it, but it's looking like it's going to be affecting areas south of Lake Erie, so we don't think it's going to have too much of an impact," said Knott.
The area received some significant rainfall recently thanks to the remains of tropical depression Gordon, but Knott said this time around, most of the action will likely be stateside.
"We're expecting some winds and we'll probably see some cloud from the remnants of Florence," said Knott. "But as far as the precipitation goes, it's looking like it's going to be in Ohio and Pennsylvania state."
Florence, with a very large coverage area and a massive, well-defined eye that was roughly the size of the city of Toronto, had gathered enough strength in the Atlantic Ocean to be classified as a very dangerous Category 4 storm, but weakened until it made landfall as a Category 1. However, winds and heavy rains have played havoc on the Carolinas and at least 18 people have died as a result of the storm.
While Florence does not appear to be a factor in southwestern Ontario at the moment, Knott said the region will see variably cloudy skies on Monday and Tuesday. Temperature highs will be around 27 C on Monday with a humidex of 34 C. Forecast highs for Tuesday will be around 30 C.