Snow lovers who thought their dreams of a white Christmas had been dashed may be in luck.
Even though most of the snow from last week's snowstorm has melted, Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson, says there is the potential for a "just-in-time" white Christmas.
Coulson told CTV Toronto that he expects blowing snow and poor visibility as temperatures are expected to drop near freezing levels on Christmas Day.
The national meteorological service has been tracking a storm system that is predicted to hit the GTA with high winds and "heavy" precipitation during the Christmas holidays.
Many Twitter users have adopted the hashtag "SantaBomb" to refer to the storm's arrival date.
Coulson says that part of the name is derived from the fact that an intensifying storm system is sometimes classified as a weather bomb.
The storm system is expected to hit the GTA with strong wind gusts and rain on Christmas Eve.
"At this point It looks like the main precipitation is going to be rain … there could be some notable rain (fall), but it is still a little too early to tell exactly how much rain," Coulson said in an phone interview.
But on Christmas Day, Environment Canada expects temperatures to cool off and for the snow to set in. Coulson says that as the system passes by the GTA on Friday, high winds could lead blowing snow and poor visibility.
While temperatures will drop from above the freezing mark on Thursday evening to closer to the freezing mark on Friday, Coulson says that people in the GTA shouldn’t have to worry about freezing rain conditions like those seen during the Dec. 2013 ice storm.
"It is not really setting up that way at this point, he said." "There may be a brief period of freezing rain in there somewhere, but it is not really anything of the same type we had a year ago in southern Ontario."
Coulson says that a more accurate picture of the weather forecast should be available by late Sunday or Monday morning.
