Warm January, cold February?

From some of the comments I’ve been hearing over the last couple of weeks you would think that January must have been on track to be one of the coldest Januaries ever. It seems as if one week of really cold weather has created one horribly cold winter! I guess everyone has already forgotten about

World weather 2012 – Part I

The biggest worldwide story last March was the “summer-in-March” heat wave 
that brought record-setting temperatures to much of central and eastern North America

Usually around this time Environment Canada comes out with its top weather stories that occurred in Canada this past year. While I will do an article on this topic once it is released, I thought for now that I would take a look back at 2012 and summarize some of the major weather stories that


Warm start, cool end to week

I have to begin this week’s forecast by saying the overall confidence in the forecast is not that high! The different weather models have not been very consistent from model run to model run, which means it is a tough period to forecast. The models show an area of low pressure moving across the southern

Colorado low coming our way

Last week’s forecast didn’t turn out quite as well as I would have hoped. High pressure never really made it into our region and temperatures didn’t really warm up like they were supposed to. As a result, any precipitation that did fall ended up falling as snow, and over some western regions it ended up


Quieter and milder weather

An interesting note to start off this forecast is that if the weather models are correct, areas as close to us as Thunder Bay will be feeling the effects of the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, as the system stalls out over Eastern Canada this week. For us here in Manitoba, this will block a ridge

Active weather pattern; a little taste of winter

It definitely seems like we’re in a new weather pattern as the cool, wet weather looks to continue for pretty much this entire forecast period. The weather models have been having a heck of a time coming to a consensus on how the weather will play out during the first half of this forecast period.


Cool and cloudy Thanksgiving

See what happens when you pat yourself on the back? Mother Nature tends to put you right back in your place! Last week it looked as though the ridge of high pressure forecasted to track across Manitoba would weaken. Well, the ridge did track across our region, but remained very strong, and instead of seeing

Record low to record highs

Sometimes the weather actually does behave just like the “textbook” says it should — and that’s what we saw late last week and into last weekend. After we discussed “Indian summer” we saw record-cold overnight lows turn into record-warm daytime highs! The warm temperatures at the end of the month made September 2012 the 16th


Frost hits most of the Prairies

Interestingly enough, it was about this time last year that I was in the process of writing a very similar article to what I’m writing now. The eastern Prairies have seen a fairly warm fall so far this year, with average temperatures during the first two weeks of September around 2 C above the long-term

Warm summer, warm fall?

From most people’s perspective summer is now over and we are entering fall. A few locations in southeastern Manitoba even saw a touch of frost over the weekend. That means it’s time to take a look ahead to see what the long-range forecasters predict for this fall. But before we tackle that, we need to