Final thoughts on the eclipse – a wet end to the week for Montreal | Weather in the suburbs

After the bright warm sunshine of Monday and Tuesday, we have a very stormy pattern on the way to end the work week. Low pressure will move north over the Great Lakes on Wednesday, pushing a mild and moist air mass into southern Quebec. Showers and thunderstorms will develop overnight toward Montreal, tapering off Wednesday. The humidity will rise again on Thursday at the start of the weekend, with some rain expected in the city.

20-40mm of rain is possible tonight and Saturday morning. Temperatures could be quite warm due to the breaks in cloud cover we get on Wednesday. Highs of 16-20C (60-68F) are expected across the region on Tuesday and Wednesday, cooling to 12-14C (52F-54F), with showers on Thursday and Friday.

Final thoughts on the Great Eclipse

A few final thoughts on Monday's total solar eclipse in Montreal. I was left breathless, it was an emotional miracle to say the least. The pictures I tried to take with my iPhone failed to capture what I saw. Others have had success with their photography, which is not my forte. The event was like one big party in Montreal and followed a path of totality that stretched thousands of kilometers from Mexico to Atlantic Canada.

I went down to Lake Valois Bay in Dorval on Monday afternoon to escape the concrete jungle that is our office. The place was filled with families and people of all ages, languages ​​and cultures, enjoying the heavenly splendor of the sun together.

I was impressed not only by the eclipse itself, but also by the conditions, patterns and shades of the eclipse created in the lower atmosphere, that is, the weather. During the eclipse, there was a decrease in solar radiation, causing the temperature to drop from 17C (63F) in Montreal at 14:14 before the eclipse to 14C (56F) at totality. Later it will rise to an afternoon high of 18C (65F) by 5pm.

Clouds were the main concern for much of southern Ontario and Quebec on the day of Monday's eclipse. Throughout the day, a warm front moved slowly across eastern Ontario into southwestern Quebec. Finally, the high-altitude cirrus clouds created some pretty spectacular halos around the eclipsed sun. The halo is caused by the sun reflecting off ice crystals in clouds high in the atmosphere. Although the clouds added a veil to the eclipse, they did not detract from it in any way, at least from my perspective.

I've been watching the sky since I was a kid, and I've been interested in weather since I was a kid, and I've never experienced a more amazing atmospheric or astronomical event in my life. It lived up to the hype and I'm so grateful I got the chance to see it. My only complaint was that the one minute and thirty seconds in Montreal was too short.