Forecast: An unsettled long weekend en route

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Published: May 20, 2016

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This week's map shows the total precipitation that fell across the Prairies during the 14 days ending May 12. Most of Alberta and Manitoba had a dry start to May, with a large portion of both these provinces seeing fewer than five mm of precipitation. Across south-central Saskatchewan, an upper low brought upward of 50 mm to some places.

After a pretty chilly weekend it looks like summer is going to try and move back in during this forecast period, with plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures expected.

This forecast period will begin with an area of high pressure building to our southeast and an area of low pressure over far Western Canada. Together, these two features will bring us a warm westerly to southwesterly flow that will help to boost temperatures toward the top end of the usual temperature range for this time of the year.

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Thanks to the high to our southeast, we should see mainly sunny skies right through until at least Saturday. Under the strong late-spring sunshine, daytime highs will be running in the mid- to upper 20s, with overnight lows around the 10 C mark. For the long weekend, the weather models show the western low finally kicking eastward, but confidence in the exact track and timing of this system is low. Currently, it looks like the low will move across central Manitoba sometime on Sunday, bringing with it some clouds along with a few showers or thundershowers. At this time it doesn’t look like this system will bring widespread rainfall.

The forecast for the first half of next week is pretty muddled as the weather models are having a tough time figuring out what looks to be a fairly active pattern. The weather models show another low developing over Montana on Tuesday that could bring a chance of thundershowers to our region. This low is then forecast to track northeastward and weaken on Wednesday. Temperatures look to continue to be mild, but exactly how warm it will be depends on just how much sunshine we get.

Usual temperature range for this period: Highs, 15 to 26 C; lows, 2 to 10 C.

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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