(Keeperofthezoo/iStock/Getty Images)

Prairie Forecast: Winter temperatures try to move in

Issued Nov. 22, covering Nov. 22-29

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.

Cold-cloud precipitation and super-cooled water

Meteorology 101: Cold clouds dominate Prairie weather even in summer

Preliminary numbers for October’s global temperatures are coming out and they don’t look good. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, October 2023 was the warmest October on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 15.3 C, which was 0.85 C above the 1991-2020


File photo of storm clouds over northeastern Alberta. (ImagineGolf/E+/Getty Images)

Prairie forecast: One more shot of warm weather?

Issued Nov. 14, covering Nov. 15 to 18

It looks like the well above average temperatures that flooded across the prairies over the last week or so will be coming to an end, at least eventually. The good news is that it doesn't look like it will be an abrupt end with well below average temperatures moving in.

Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies for the week centred on Nov. 1, 2023, in degrees Celsius. (CPC.ncep.noaa.gov)

El Nino to continue through Northern Hemisphere spring, U.S. forecaster says

Reuters — El Nino weather conditions will continue through the Northern Hemisphere during April-June 2024 with a 62 per cent chance, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday. “Above-average sea surface temperatures (SST) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean were indicative of a strong El Nino, with anomalies increasing in the central and east-central Pacific



A sea otter floats near the Columbia Glacier along Alaska’s southern gulf coast. (Chansak Joe/iStock/Getty Images)

Prairie Forecast: Nice, quiet early-winter weather

Issued Nov. 1, covering Nov. 1 to 8

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


Long-range outlook points to warmer winter

Long-range outlook points to warmer winter

Odds less likely for Prairies next three months

MarketsFarm — Warmer than normal temperatures are expected across nearly all of Canada this winter, with average precipitation for most of the agricultural areas of the Prairies. The latest long-range seasonal forecast from Environment Canada, released Tuesday, calls for a 40 per cent chance of above-normal temperatures from November through January across most of Alberta,

(Mysticenergy/iStock/Getty Images)

Prairie Forecast Update: Warmer air not in the cards

Issued Oct. 29, covering Oct. 29 to Nov. 1

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


Fresh snow on an ornamental crabapple tree in Winnipeg, Oct. 25, 2023. (Dave Bedard photo)

Prairie Forecast: Arctic high slowly moving out

Issued Oct. 25, covering Oct. 25 to Nov. 1

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

The planet continues to get hotter

Global air and ocean temperatures are at record levels

Let’s talk about record-breaking temperatures. Not daily records, not records for a city or country, but global temperature records. You may have seen an article or two about how September shattered the record for warmest month, after the warmest August on record. It looks like 2023 will be the hottest year on record for the planet. Let’s dig a