Barometric Pressure Forecast for Richmond Hill, Canada
Barometric pressure forecast for Richmond Hill, Canada — on the Oak Ridges Moraine in York Region, north of Toronto. See current barometric pressure and what it means for weather-sensitive people.
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Pressure and weather in Richmond Hill
Richmond Hill sits on the Oak Ridges Moraine, the glacial ridge running east to west across southern Ontario that forms the drainage divide between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe. At roughly 800 feet the town is some 500 feet above the Toronto lakeshore twenty kilometres to the south, and that difference is the whole story of its local climate. The moraine is colder in every season, holds snow weeks longer into spring, and converts borderline lakeshore rain into moraine snow several times each winter. Three storm types drive the barometer. Colorado and Texas lows tracking up the Ohio Valley are the heavy hitters, with falls of twenty-two to thirty hPa and the region's largest snowfalls when they pass to the south. Alberta clippers cross fast and shallow, dropping ten to fifteen hPa in a few hours with a hard wind shift and a cold blast behind. And in the shoulder seasons the town sits close to the line where a storm's warm nose produces freezing rain rather than snow, the hazard that shut the region down in the ice storm of 2013. Summer brings humid Great Lakes air and afternoon thunderstorms that often intensify as they climb the moraine.
What this means for you
Being 500 feet above the lakeshore puts Richmond Hill on the cold side of borderline storms more often than a Toronto forecast implies. Checking a barometric pressure forecast for the moraine rather than the city centre closes that gap.