Prairie forecast: Mild and dry weather right up to the holidays

Here is the big picture: there are two current storm tracks across North America. The first, which is well to our north, is the storm track that would normally be across our region. So far this winter, it has been displaced to our north – one of the reasons we have been dry. The second storm track is well to the south across the southern U.S. This places us under a rather slack flow as we oscillate between pushes of warm and cool air with each passage of low-pressure to our north.



Prairie Forecast: Quiet, mild start to December

The last forecast played out pretty close to what the weather models were predicting, with one small deviation: temperatures ended up being about 2 to 4 C warmer than forecasted. This will be something to keep in mind as we look at this week's forecast. The forecast is looking rather quiet for this time of[...]

Prairie Forecast: Winter temperatures try to move in

There is a large, deep area of low pressure spinning over the northern half of Hudson Bay along with a building area of high pressure over the Yukon. The counterclockwise rotation around the Hudson Bay low will create a north to northwesterly flow across the Prairies. This will allow the Yukon high to drop southward.[...]


Prairie Forecast: Nice, quiet early-winter weather

Interesting weather pattern setting up across the Prairies during this forecast period. Well, maybe "interesting" isn't the right word; "boring" might be a better one. What I mean by "interesting" is just how quickly we swung from a warm fall pattern to a cool winter pattern. Low temperatures across the Prairies over the last week[...]

Prairie Forecast Update: Warmer air not in the cards

The forecast for this period has been playing out pretty close to what the weather models were predicting, but with a few small differences. For Alberta, the forecasted upper ridge does not look like it will get nearly as strong as originally forecasted as a strong northwesterly flow helps to flatten the ridge. This means[...]


Prairie Forecast: False start to winter as mild air returns

It looks more and more as though our late-October cold snap and snowy conditions were indeed a false start to winter. In the last forecast I mentioned the really cold air looks to be bottled up well to our north, and it was and will be for the next week or two. You can get[...]

Prairie Forecast Update: Cold and some snow coming

I have been waiting to see if the weather models were going to come into agreement on the upcoming shift on our weather pattern and for the most part, they have: it's going to get cold! A large area of low pressure has formed over the eastern Arctic and the counterclockwise rotation around that low[...]


Prairie Forecast: Arctic high slowly moving out

As is often the case at this time of the year, the weather models got the general picture right, but the finer details were much to be desired. Usually, the models struggle with the forecast beyond two to five days out, but for much of this forecast period they struggled with the finer details on[...]

Prairie Forecast: Sprawling high to bring dry, seasonably warm weather

For the first time in a while, the last forecast period did not play out exactly as the weather models predicted, thanks mostly to a strong area of low pressure that moved westwards from the Atlantic into central Ontario last weekend and into the first half of this week. While the low didn't impact the[...]