Parts of the GTA and Ontario were coping on Wednesday with freezing rain that forced one school board to cancel classes, while others had to cancel transportation.
Environment Canada said the day would involve lots of rain and ice pellets mixed in as Noon approached, with the risk of freezing rain at noon.
By evening, Environment Canada called for showers ending before Thursday morning, followed by clouds with a 40 per cent chance of showers or drizzle.
There would also be a risk in Toronto of a thunderstorm later into the evening and overnight, with fog patches developing overnight.
David Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada told Humber News Wednesday that there is a complexity to tracking the changes involved with freezing rain.
Especially when it comes to the scale of cold air meeting with warmer air’s moisture.
“When that moisture clashes with the cold air – especially at the freezing mark – if it was -8 C, it would all be snow. If it was +5 C or 6 C, it’ll all be rain,” he said.
“But it [freezing rain] is around that sweet zone of the freezing mark, and that’s what causes the trickiness, the complexity of the system.”
The weather closed down schools in York Region.
“Due to inclement weather conditions, school bus and taxi transportation has been cancelled today, March 23rd, 2022. All schools at the York Region District School Board are closed to students. Schools at the York Catholic District School Board are open to students today,” the board said on its website.
All Catholic schools in York remained open.
Meanwhile buses were cancelled in Peel District, and classes were cancelled in one part of Caledon.
In Halton, some buses were cancelled in Georgetown.
And in Dufferin, some buses were also cancelled.
There were numerous warnings from Environment Canada on Wednesday about freezing rain including in Barrie, Orillia, Midland, Grey-Bruce, Haliburton, and Parry Sound.
Phillips tricky to be accurate with what will happen next with the freezing rain.
“If it’s strictly rain, I don’t see a problem necessarily unless its humungous amounts of rain, falling in short periods of time.” he said.
“And that wasn’t the case [here]. It was really the transition from over different phases of precipitation,” he said.
“It’s tricky, ” he said, “It’s not something that we could be totally accurate in terms of knowing exactly knowing when the precipitation begins when it would end, and what will it do during that period.”
Phillips said freezing rain can result in a split result in even one location.
“It could be rain in your front yard and ice pellets in your backyard.”