The remainder of this week will be filled with sun as yet another Arctic ridge dominates over the Eastern Prairies, continuing the unshakable grasp of winter. While temperatures will be milder compared to the first half of the week, we’ll reamain well below our normal of around +9°C but with the milder temperatures the sun should be able to continue slowly melting the snow we have. Unfortunately, it’s looking like a fairly significant storm may bring another shot of winter.

This Week

Wednesday

0°C / -14°C
Sunny

Thursday

2°C / -10°C
Sunny

Friday

4°C / -8°C
Mainly sunny; increasing cloudiness in the evening.

A significant Arctic high pressure system will lay dominant over the Eastern Prairies over the next few days with the main ridge axis running from near Churchill towards southwestern Manitoba. We’ll see temperatures slowly climb over the next few days, but our daytime highs will likely remain in the 0-4°C range, although any areas in the city that have managed to become mostly snow-free may get a little warmer than that. Regions outside the City of Winnipeg will likely top out within that range. Perhaps most significantly will be the warming of our overnight lows, which will be in the low minus teens this mronign and move into the minus single digits by the end of the week.

We’ll have plenty of sunshine over the next few days with some clouds starting to work their way into the Red River Valley on Friday night associated with a weakening system pushing through Saskatchewan.

The Weekend

Saturday looks to be a mix of sun and cloud, but Sunday will be quite an interesting day weather-wise as a Wyoming low pushes northeastwards into southern North Dakota through the day. While the morning looks to start off cloudy, the GDPS¹ deepens the low significantly through the afternoon, spreading precipitation northwards into Southern Manitoba. There’s still plenty of time and uncertainty, but this system (at the moment) looks like it could end up producing as much as 15cm of snow. How much actually accumulates will vary highly, since temperatures are expected to be right near 0°C and non-snow-covered surfaces will likely melt much of the snow on contact for the first several hours of the event. There’s also the possibility enough warm air will wrap north of the system that some of the precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow. This system would impact us through Monday as well given the current model output. We’ll keep our eyes on the development of this system; stay tuned.