Merry Christmas!

All of us here at A Weather Moment would like to take just a moment to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas! It’s been a wonderful year here at A Weather Moment and I want to thank you for dropping by — whether this is the first time you’ve ever been to the site or come here regularly — to see what we have to say about the weather. I hope that you find (or continue to find!) what we do here of value and continue to stop by for your weather forecasts, summaries and news!

Holiday Forecast

At the risk of sounding like a broken record that simply utters the phrase “deep freeze” over and over again, I’m glad to let everyone know that we all get perhaps the most wonderful Christmas gift that could be given to us this year: a break from the deep freeze. The next few days will bring temperatures near-then-surpassing our normal temperatures for this year as warmer air floods eastwards across the Prairies.

Christmas Day

-15°C / -25°C
Mixed skies with a chance of afternoon flurries.

Boxing Day

-11°C / ⇒ -10°C
Cloudy periods with seasonal temperatures. Chance of flurries in the morning.

Friday

-4°C / -17°C
Mixed skies and warm. Slight chance of light, isolated flurries.

We’ll see mixed skies today with a daytime high of around –15°C and a chance of some afternoon flurry activity as a weak upper disturbance makes it’s way over our area. No significant accumulations are expected. Winds will be a fairly steady 20km/h or so out of the northwest. We’ll continue to see mixed skies through the overnight period as the temperature drops to around –25°C.

Tomorrow will bring cloudy periods with fairly seasonal temperatures as the mercury climbs to around –11°C. A few flurries are possible in the morning as a weak upper-level warm front pushes eastwards over the Red River Valley. Winds will be fairly light out of the south at only around 15–20km/h. Overcast conditions are expected on Thursday night as a warm front pushes eastwards through the region. Little-to-no precipitation is expected with it as it manages to keep our temperature steady near around –10°C.

Friday will again bring mixed skies, although we do have a chance at becoming mainly sunny for a decent amount of time sometime between the late morning and mid-afternoon period. There’s a slight chance of an isolated flurry or two, but nothing worth going into any detail about. The temperature will climb to a balmy –4°C or so thanks to westerly winds bringing in much milder air.

Snow will push in overnight as a powerful Alberta Clipper moves into the region. It’s still too early to make any precise predictions, but it appears that the track of the system will bring the heaviest band of snow through the Southern Interlake region with anywhere from 10–20cm of new snow on the ground by the end of Saturday. Amounts drop off to 2–5cm in the Southern Red River Valley. Here in Winnipeg it could end up being a major snowfall; cold air has a tendency to be a bit of a bigger bully than the models let it be and shift storm tracks further south. It wouldn’t take too much shifting for that 10–20cm band to move right over Winnipeg. It’s all too early to tell specifics at the moment, though; it’s fairly likely we’ll see accumulating snow Friday night/Saturday morning, the only question is will it be a little or a lot? We’ll have more details on the system in Friday’s post once things have a chance to develop more.

The Weekend

Things go downhill from there, unfortunately. Another shot of bitterly cold Arctic air[1] will push into the Prairies which will push our daytime highs back into the –20’s and overnight lows to near or below –30°C. Unfortunately, it also looks like it’s going to stick around until at least the middle of next week, if not longer.

So enjoy your Christmas present of a pretty nice 3 days and get out there while you can! From all of us here at A Weather Moment, we wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and all the best in the coming year!