Last week’s forecast played out fairly close to what the weather models predicted. While it did miss out on the Saturday morning snowfall that hit parts of south-central regions, it did catch the weekend cool-down and the warm-up that started this week.
For this forecast period, it looks like mild weather will continue to dominate our region. Wednesday looks to be a mild and windy day as a deep area of low pressure travels quickly through northern Manitoba. This low will drag a cold front through southern and central regions late Wednesday, which will drop temperatures back down to more average values on Thursday. At this point it looks like the cold front will only bring a few clouds with it.
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Temperatures will moderate back toward the high end of the usual temperature range on Friday and Saturday as a broad area of high pressure builds to our southeast and low pressure begins to organize to our west. This western low is then forecast to track across central Manitoba late Saturday or early Sunday. Precipitation from this low will mostly be confined to central regions, but there could be the odd shower or overnight flurry over southern regions as cooler air works its way southward behind this low on Sunday.
For much of next week we look to be in a fast northwesterly flow that will result in temperatures staying on the cool side, with daytime highs expected to be in the 5 to 8 C range and overnight lows around -4 C. It looks like we’ll see sunny to partly cloudy skies to begin the week. The weather models then point to a fast-moving system passing through our region during the second half of next week that could bring the first widespread snowfall of the season. At this point, confidence in this system is low, but if we do see snowfall it likely won’t be significant, because of the fast movement of the low.
Looking further ahead, the weather models continue to lean toward mild weather building back in for the last week of the month.
Usual temperature range for this period: Highs, 4 to 15 C; lows, -6 to 4 C. Probability of precipitation falling as snow: 40 per cent.
