'Beast of a storm' coming to Ottawa, threatening holiday travel plans

A major winter storm is expected to bring a dangerous mix of rain, snow, flash freezing and high winds to Ottawa and much of Ontario, threatening to disrupt holiday weekend travel plans.

"This is not what you want during the busiest weekend coming up of the year," Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told CTV Morning Live on Wednesday. "The weather is probably the worst you could imagine."

"People are going to have to recalibrate their travel plans, maybe cancel them in some cases."

Environment Canada issued a winter storm watch Wednesday afternoon calling for snow beginning late Thursday. Up to 15 centimetres could fall by Friday morning before the show transitions to rain.

"During this transition, there is a risk of freezing rain and ice pellets."

Temperatures are then expected to plummet Friday afternoon, leading to a potential flash freeze. That temperature drop could bring strong and "potentially damaging" winds up to 90 km/h Friday and continuing into Saturday. Those winds could be accompanied by heavy snow at times.

The weather agency is asking people to consider changing their travel plans amid potentially dangerous travel conditions.

"Visibility may be suddenly reduced at times in heavy snow," Environment Canada said. "Travel is expected to be hazardous due to reduced visibility in some locations. Surfaces such as highways, roads, walkways and parking lots may become icy and slippery."

Phillips said the coming storm will be the product of very cold Arctic air—currently causing frigid temperatures in western Canada—colliding with a warm surge from the Gulf of Mexico.

"You get wild weather when you have cold air duking it out with warm air," he said. "The energy in that system is incredible.

"I don't think there will be any records set. But you can get a lot of misery even if you don't set records. It's the multi-faceted part of this storm that really creates the issues. It's a beast of a storm. It's got the shot of rain, the shot of snow later on, it's got that flash freeze, and it's got powerful winds."

@ctvnewsottawa A major winter storm is threatening to disrupt holiday travel in #Ontario this weekend. @Matt Skube breaks down the timeline. #weather #storm #winter #ottawa #fyp ♬ original sound - ctvnewsottawa

Phillips said the "critical window of concern" is from around noon Friday until noon on Saturday.

"That's when you transition from the rain to snow, the blowing will pick up…surfaces are going to be icy and treacherous," he said. "Then I think things will quiet down as we get into Christmas Eve say after lunch."

The silver lining to all this, he added, is a potentially picture-perfect Christmas Day in Ottawa on Sunday.

"A perfect Christmas Day is that Christmas card look: you've got snow on the ground and you've got snow in the air with some sunshine," he said. "It could be a mystical winter wonderland.

"But getting to that point may be very difficult."

Hydro Ottawa preparing for possible outages

Hydro Ottawa says its crews are preparing to respond to power outages from the storm, and is encouraging customers to be prepared for possible extended outages.

"Temperatures are expected to drop on Friday leading to a potential flash freeze for locations that receive rainfall, accompanied at times by strong winds and snow that could cause power outages and damage to our infrastructure," Hydro Ottawa said in a note to customers on Wednesday.

"Customers are encouraged to be prepared in case of extended power outages. Please ensure that electronics, such as cell phones and laptops, are fully charged ahead of the storm."

The utility updates its outage map every 15 minutes, and will also be posting updates to social media.

Storm impacts already being felt at Ottawa airport

The massive storm has not hit Ottawa yet, by the impacts of the severe weather in B.C. were already being felt at the Ottawa airport on Wednesday.

Queen’s University student Seamus Carlyle took the bus to Ottawa from Kingston to meet his girlfriend Audrey Gunn and travel together to Grand Forks, B.C.

“I must say that travelling today has been pretty miserable," Carlyle said.

The couple were supposed to leave on Wednesday. Instead, they are leaving on Friday, flying out of Hamilton.

Instead of flying to B.C., they are flying to Calgary and driving to their destination.

"We have to drive to Hamilton and instead of flying to British Columbia, we have to fly to Calgary and then drive a further eight hours to our home."

Gunn says she is glad they started this journey Wednesday and not when the storm hits Ottawa.

“We are happy to be going home for Christmas. Hopefully things work out and we can make it in time to spend Christmas with family.”

Ann Chapman, in town from Whitehorse to visit her parents in Ottawa, was supposed to fly home on Tuesday. But her connecting flight through Vancouver was cancelled and she was forced to stay overnight.

“I want to get out today, for sure," she said. "The rebookings for all the cancelled flights are in a couple of days, so I have to get out of town."

Chapman spent the day Wednesday at the airport trying to find a way home. She re-booked herself to fly through Edmonton on Thursday.

Ottawa airport officials expect about 12,000 passengers to pass through the airport each day on Thursday and Friday. They are warning people to keep a close eye on the departures list online.

- with files from Leah Larocque, CTV News Ottawa