Batten down your hatches, there's a wicked one coming our way

The satellite images from Wednesday
show the formation of some major
weather tracking toward the region

Notice of Update: Environment Canada has now posted a Wind Warning for the North Coast and Haida Gwaii

Tie down the outdoor items and stock up on your batteries and candles, as the first major storm of the fall season is but a few days away from arrival.

The remnants of Hurricane Oho apparently have decided that Haida Gwaii and the North Coast will be a nice place to start off its Thanksgiving weekend journey into British Columbia.

An item in the Vancouver Province provides residents of the Northwest with the first heads up of what may be coming our way, as the storm system travelling away from Hawaii makes its track towards our corner of the province.

It's anticipated that the storm will hit hardest between Haida Gwaii and Prince Rupert, with sustained winds of 80 to 100 km/h and gusts of up to 120 km/h.

Rainfall totals between Thursday and Monday between Bella Coola and Prince Rupert will be in the range of 150 and 200 millimetres, with mountain ranges to receive close to 300 mm.

The first wave of the major storm conditions is expected in the early morning hours of Friday, towards the 2 AM period.

The arrival of the last gasps of a hurricane is not the only system to come ashore this weekend, Environment Canada notes that two or three successive storms will batter the region over the four day period.

You can review the Province story here.

So far there has been no official Weather Notice for the North Coast or Haida Gwaii posted to the Environment Canada website  ( Update: a Special Weather Statement was posted to the Environment Canada website at 4 PM)

In recent years, storms around the Thanksgiving period have provided for any number of challenges, last year a mid October storm left the Russian vessel Simushir adrift off Haida Gwaii.

In 2010, a vicious windstorm laid to waste some Thanksgiving plans when a major fall weather system rolled across the North Coast in the middle of the Thanksgiving weekend, resulting in lengthy power outages and significant wind damage around the city.

You can track some of the Northwest media items on the storm from our weather archive page here.