What goes into a 35-year snowfall?

Hopefully you read last week’s weather article and have been attempting to make a few weather forecasts of your own. Some of you might wonder why last week’s article wasn’t all about the snowstorm that affected much of southern and central Manitoba. It has to do with deadlines; due to Remembrance Day I had an

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


Problems trying to create winter forecast

Last issue we took a quick look at the different factors that must be taken into account when trying to create a long-range winter weather forecast. For those of you who missed the article, I think it’s easy to summarize it by saying — trying to make a long-range forecast is so complicated that you

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.

Dry to December, then Alberta Clippers: AccuWeather

AccuWeather.com forecasts that following the third-warmest winter on record in Canada last year, snow and cold will make a comeback across much of the nation this winter. In a forecast issued Oct. 17, the U.S.-based firm said slightly colder-than-normal weather with near-normal snow is predicted for most of the Prairie region, which was the warmest


Early snow doesn’t equal snowy winter

It seemed to catch pretty much everyone by surprise, including yours truly. What looked to be an innocent area of low pressure, expected to stay well to the southeast of Manitoba late last week, ended up bringing the first taste of winter to much of eastern and south-central Manitoba. Most of southeastern Manitoba saw a

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


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