A cold front will bring cool and rainy conditions to southern Manitoba today as it ushers near-seasonal temperatures back into the region.
The weather today will be a rather marked change from yesterday. Instead of beautiful sunny conditions with warm weather, a cold front will bring clouds and rain to Winnipeg along with much cooler conditions.
Rain will begin mid-morning today and last into the early afternoon. Winnipeg will likely end up with 5–10 mm of rain before it tapers off, but there’s a small chance that it might drift just a bit north of the city, lowering our amounts. Other than that, moderate northwest winds of 30–40 km/h will spread into the region this morning and persist through the day. These cool winds will send temperatures falling into the afternoon, dipping down to 3 or 4 °C by the end of the work day.
Those northwest winds will continue into the evening. As temperatures fall, lake-effect precipitation is possible off of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba. As temperatures continue to drop overnight, it could result in a few snow flurries moving through the Red River Valley. The best chance for snow, though, will be in the lee of Lake Winnipeg where bands of lake-effect snow will likely last through the night.
Temperatures will drop to around -1 °C overnight in Winnipeg with winds dying off.
With a ridge of high pressure moving through the region, Wednesday will bring mainly sunny skies as the lake-effect cloud clears out. Temperatures will climb to a high near 10 °C with southerly winds picking back up to around 30 km/h.
A weak frontal wave moving through the region on Thursday night with bring cloudy skies back to the area. This will help keep temperatures a bit warmer; Winnipeg should see an overnight low in the low single digits rather than dipping below freezing. Those southerly winds will also drop off overnight.
Expect clearing skies on Thursday with light northwest winds picking up. Temperatures should again climb to a high around 10 °C. Heading through the night temperatures will dip down to around freezing under clear skies.
Long Range Outlook
A broad area of high pressure will build into the Prairies from the west through the weekend as a weak upper ridge builds in the west. This will bring sunny to partly cloudy skies to southern Manitoba with seasonably mild highs in the 10 to 15 °C range. Overnight lows will range from sub-freezing back to the mid-single digits.
Looking even further ahead, early indications that Halloween this year will be much nicer than last year’s. Rather than temperatures near -9 °C with 20–30 km/h winds making it feel closer to -20, early signs point to an evening with temperatures around +1 °C and winds near 20 km/h. This is obviously subject to change since it’s a ways away yet, but there are few large-scale patterns that suggest we’ll see a drastic snow/cool-down before Halloween this year. Hopefully that forecast can hold!
Today’s seasonal daytime high in Winnipeg is 8 °C while the seasonal overnight low is -2 °C.
