Monster storm in North Atlantic stretches cloud from Atlantic Canada to Portugal

NASA satellite imagery showing cloud created by an intense and sprawling storm sitting over the North Atlantic.

An intense and huge low-pressure system is centred about 750 kilometres to the northeast of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Clouds created by the storm and associated weather fronts stretch from Newfoundland towards Atlantic coastal Portugal, Spain, and France.

The centre of the low and associated weather front along with satellite imagery.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. has the central pressure of the system analysed as near 940 millibars. A millibar, abbreviated as mb, is a unit used to measure atmospheric pressure. For context, low, or storm weather systems, usually begin below 1,010 millibars. The strongest winter Nor’easters in the Maritimes can fall below 970 mb. White Juan, which was a winter storm that hit the Maritimes in 2004, was recorded as falling to 959 mb. The standing low temperature record for a low-pressure system in Canada is post-tropical storm Fiona, which was estimated to have reached 932.7 mb upon landfall.

The pressure gradient created between the North Atlantic low and high pressure centred over Quebec is driving hurricane-force winds near the centre of the storm. Hurricane forecast winds have also been detected by satellite imagery in the Atlantic waters just to the south of Greenland. Wind barbs that show two full triangles are 100 knots, or 185 km/h.

Satellite analyzed winds around the storm from the NOAA.

There are only tertiary weather impacts from the storm in the Maritimes. It is helping to keep a colder and gusty west wind blowing over the Gulf of St. Lawrence and into Cape Breton. The colder wind is picking up moisture from the gulf and bringing it onshore in the form of flurries and snow squalls, mostly for the Cape Breton Highlands.

Some of the cloud seen here in a webcam from Atlantic coastal Spain and above the skyline of St. John’s associated with the powerful weather system.