Is the jet stream getting stuck more often?

It’s best to hope these ‘blocking patterns’ don’t become the norm This is one of those weeks when I’m just not sure what to write about, so I thought I’d discuss some ongoing weather research that just might help us understand how we could go from a record-warm March to a record-cold April in just

Out like a lamb and in like a lamb

When we have a quiet weather pattern with no strong systems affecting our region, it can sometimes be a little tough in the late winter and early spring to figure out just what will happen in regards to the weather. While last week’s forecast wasn’t too bad, it did miss out on a lot of


Less Arctic ice influencing our weather?

In the last issue I looked at possible trends in the amount of melting occurring during the winter across the Prairies. In this issue I’m going to look at another question that has repeatedly been asked of me, and I feel it kind of ties into the winter melting trends. This question has to do

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes

Since they can’t actually get inside to measure it, scientists aren’t completely sure what causes a tornado

We’ve seen a few thunderstorms over southern and central Manitoba so far this July, but most have not been very severe. That said, over the weekend, southwestern Manitoba had a tornado watch in effect and that reminded me that we need to finish our look at severe thunderstorms and in particular, tornadoes. The biggest question


Severe summer weather: Wind

With the return of summer-like heat last week we also saw the return of severe summer weather. Plenty of thunderstorms rumbled across the Prairies, bringing examples of all of the different types of severe weather we can expect to see. There was plenty of lightning, hail, some really strong winds, heavy rains and, last but

Masking thunderstorm movement

As summer slowly works its way back into our region, it’s time to pick up where we left off in our discussion of severe summer weather. In this article we’ll look at how we can predict which direction a thunderstorm might be moving. Trying to figure out just how intense a thunderstorm will be and


Looking at severe summer weather

Usually around this time of the year my mind turns to summer and summer weather. In particular, I start to think about thunderstorms and severe summer weather. This year, with the summer-in-March weather pattern, we saw some really early thunderstorms, but with the cooler April weather pattern things have settled down. Now, I don’t want

Active thunderstorm season?

Sometimes I’m as quick as the next person to jump all over weather forecasters when they’re way off the mark. It’s easy for us to notice when a forecast is wrong, but we rarely notice how often they are right. A lot of people are also quick to say how weather forecasting hasn’t really gotten


Average spring weather

This forecast period will start with us seeing a predominantly westerly flow. To our north there will be an area of high pressure, while to our south we’ll see several weak areas of low pressure moving by within the westerly flow. This makes the first part of the forecast period a little tough to figure

How ice loss influences the jet stream

I’ve spent a fair bit of time discussing the record warm weather we experienced in March over the last few weeks. We’ve looked at just what led to this remarkable weather and we discussed just how intense it really was. The fact that we saw temperatures that were between three and four standard deviations above