Issued: Monday, January 11, 2010 Covering: January 13 –January 20

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Published: January 14, 2010

Last week’s weather played out pretty much as expected, with only the light snow or freezing drizzle over the weekend being a bit of surprise. For those of you who are tired of the cold weather, then this forecast will make you happy. If you are looking for more moisture, it looks like you will be out of luck once again.

The main driver of this period’s weather will be a large area of low pressure off the West Coast of Canada. This low will remain semi-stationary during the next week or two bringing plenty of precipitation to our West Coast and relatively quiet weather across most of the Prairies.

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We will see a piece of energy break off the western low early this week and this low will then track across the northern Prairies during the middle of the week. We will see a mild southerly flow ahead of this system with highs pushing the 0 mark. Once this low passes, we will see colder air push in, but it does not appear that this will be a long or strong outbreak of arctic air.

By the weekend high pressure to our southwest will begin to build, and we should see our winds become more westerly. This will once again help to push up our temperatures with highs around -5C expected. This mild weather should last right into next week.

The longer-range models are currently pointing towards a continuation of mild weather with temperatures expected to remain 5 to 8 degrees above average until the end of the month. There is also some hints that we could see some stormy weather near the end of the month, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

Usual temperature range for this period: Highs: -22 to -5C Lows: -33 to -16C

About the author

Daniel Bezte

Daniel Bezte

Co-operator contributor

Daniel Bezte is a teacher by profession with a BA (Hon.) in geography, specializing in climatology, from the U of W. He operates a computerized weather station near Birds Hill Park.

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