If you follow the weather and weather forecasting, the last forecast period was interesting.
If you have been following my weather articles and forecasts over the years, you know I rarely bash Environment Canada, but I couldn’t help but do a lot of head-scratching last week. Early last week it was forecasting several days of snow with upwards of 20-30 centimetres, which did not make much sense.
With strong arctic high pressure in place to our north and nearly all the weather models keeping us dry, I had a hard time understanding why Environment Canada would predict this.
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Looking back at our forecast, it was off by a little bit as the arctic high stayed a little further north than expected, keeping the coldest air out of our region, but pushed far enough south to keep the main storm systems to our south. The only system to impact was the weekend one.
For this forecast period, if you were hoping for spring to arrive and the melt to begin, it looks like you will have to wait a little longer.
We should start off this period with an area of low pressure coming in off the Pacific and tracking through the south-central Prairies. We may see some accumulating snow from this system, with amounts in most areas forecasted to be around five cm.
Arctic high pressure will then build in behind this system on Thursday and Friday, bringing sunshine along with cool temperatures. Expect daytime highs to be around -8 C with overnight lows falling to around -20 C.
Over the weekend and into the first half of the week of March 20, the weather models show the arctic high slowly drifting to our south and east. This should bring our region plenty of sunshine along with fairly light winds.
The strong spring sunshine should help to slowly moderate the temperatures with highs warming toward the 0 C mark by Tuesday or Wednesday. Overnight lows will still be on the chilly side as temperatures will drop into the mid-minus-teens.
Usual temperature range for this period: highs, -9 to +3 C; lows, -21 to -8 C.
