A peculiar setup will spare Ontario and Quebec from a snowy end to the work week.

Unsettled weather is on its way with heavy rain forecast in Niagara, the Greater Toronto Area, the Ottawa Valley, and southern Quebec through Wednesday and Thursday. The system will then stall and get cut off, which is key to this forecast.

Typically this time of year a storm will move through Ontario and Quebec, eventually wrapping in colder air lending to snow as it departs. But this one won’t do that. Instead, it stalls, and the cold air following behind is forced to dive stateside.

Below freezing air and snowfall is forecast to sweep across Michigan and Ohio, all the way south into Virginia and, eventually, into the Appalachians. It’s quite uncharacteristic for states this far south to receive accumulating snowfall before major Canadian cities like Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.

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By now, almost all major cities in Quebec have usually received their first accumulating snowfall of 5 cm or more. For the moment, only Sept-Îles has received a small snowfall of at least 5 cm, back on Nov. 8.

Although the snow is late in all these Quebec cities, we typically don’t see 5 cm or more until the end of November and into December for Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto.

A trough-ridge combination will act as a shield over southern Quebec and Ottawa later this week, while temperatures begin to drop over southern Ontario.

The heart of the cold will be located south of the Great Lakes, between Chicago, Toronto, and Washington. This will create an unusual situation, as there could be snow as far south as North Carolina and rain on our side of the border.

With files from MétéoMédia, The Weather Network’s Quebec-based sister station.