Author: Brad

Brad lives in Winnipeg with his wife and two children and is the founder of A Weather Moment. He has loved weather from a very young age and has followed that passion through his life so far. He received a B.Sc. in Earth Sciences with Specialization in Atmospheric Sciences and is currently employed in the field of meteorology. You can find the author as WeatherInThePeg on Mastodon.

More of the Same

Brad Leave a comment

We’ll slowly warm up this week, but no spectacular weather is in store.

image

Surface temperatures and pressures on Monday (College of Dupage – NAM model)

Monday through Wednesday

Monday
image
Clearing
-3°C / -14°C
Tuesday
image
Mainly sunny
-4°C / -14°C
Wednesday
image
Mainly sunny
-3°C / -12°C

Monday will be another carbon-copy of what we’ve seen a lot of lately. Temperatures will be in the mid minus single digits in most areas, with the exception of forested areas and areas within the cities, where temperatures will be a good five or so degrees warmer than that. There will be a chance of flurries during the morning into the early afternoon before we clear out by later in the day. Tuesday will again be almost identical to Monday – except sunnier – so no further elaboration is needed about that.

Wednesday should see temperatures come up a bit more, with highs in the low to mid minus single digits in most areas. Like Monday and Tuesday, forested and city areas will be a bit warmer than the open prairie, with values around or just above freezing.

Long Range

The long range is neither good nor bad. It looks like we should warm up even more later this week, with more widespread freezing or above freezing temperatures expected. However, further out in the long range models show more cold air dropping south into Southern Manitoba around next weekend, with no more substantial warm-ups currently in the forecast.

Benign Weather Continues

Brad Leave a comment

We’ll continue to chip away at the cold air and push towards seasonal temperatures over the next few days as the ridge of high pressure anchored over the province slowly weakens.

Friday

Mainly sunny. Increasing cloud overnight.
-7°C to -3°C / -14°C
Saturday

A mix of sun and cloud.
-3°C / -12°C
Sunday

Becoming sunnier than cloudy.
-3°C / -13°C

We’ll see mainly sunny skies today as temperatures climb from anywhere to -7°C on the northwest side of the city to closer to about -3°C downtown. Some cloud will start pushing into the Red River Valley from the east tonight which will limit our overnight low to only around -14°C instead of dropping back into the -20’s again. Saturday will see more cloud than sun with temperatures climbing to around -3°C and dropping to slightly below -10°C Saturday night. The clouds will start to break up on Sunday; we’ll likely see more sun than cloud through the late morning and afternoon period as the temperature climbs up to around -4°C yet again.

Long Range

Current indications for the next week or so are that not much will change; no large systems are in our forecast which will certainly be a help to the flooding situation. Days just below zero combined with the strong March sun and no additional precipitation are excellent for helping with the potential flood situation by melting the existing snowpack at a gradual pace.

Sunny & Climbing Towards Seasonal

Brad Leave a comment

Winnipeg & the Red River Valley will spend the rest of the week struggling back towards seasonal temperatures as an abnormal mid-March blast of cold, Arctic air has left us significantly below our normal temperature of around 0°C.

Wednesday

Mainly sunny.
-10°C / -21°C
Thursday

Mainly sunny.
-7°C / -16°C
Friday

Mainly sunny.
-5°C / -10°C

Very little is expected to change over our region through the next three days. The low that brought the blizzard to Southern Manitoba at the beginning of this week has stalled out over Ontario and while another low will be deepening in Alberta, everything will be somewhat “stuck” and we’ll remain under the ridge of high pressure between the two systems. With little motion and us sitting right under a ridge, winds will remain light and very little temperature advection will be occurring aloft. The upside to this situation is that we’ll see plenty of sun through the remainder of the week, and since that sun is now a late-March sun, it will be able to slowly work at warming up that big mass of air stuck over us. Thanks to this, temperatures will slowly rise through the week back towards more seasonal temperatures. While it may not be as warm as we’d like, you can at least get out there and enjoy the sunshine, light winds, and feel that sun working!

The Weekend

At this point, the weekend looks fairly benign: temperatures will climb close to 0°C for daytime highs and there’s a chance we’ll see some light snow on Saturday or Sunday. At this point, no significant storm system is expected, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled! Hopefully we’ll be able to close the book on this winter very soon.

Not a Great Start to the Week

Brad Leave a comment

This week hasn’t exactly started out on a pleasant note as you’re no doubt aware. Unfortunately, conditions won’t improve much after today.

image

Predicted conditions early Monday afternoon (courtesy: College of Dupage NAM model)
Monday
image
Snow ending. Blowing snow.
-12°C / -21°C

Monday

Snow and heavy blowing snow is currently ongoing in parts of the Red River Valley. This snow and blowing snow will gradually taper off today, but not before snow totals of 10 to 20cm have piled up across Southern Manitoba. High temperatures today won’t be very pleasant, nor will low temperatures tonight. Overall a horrible start to the week.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday
image
Mainly cloudy
-12°C / -22°C
Wednesday
image
Mix of sun and cloud
-11°C / -21°C

Conditions on Tuesday will see little improvement from Monday. Highs will once again be very cold by March standards. Luckily no more precipitation is expected on Tuesday (except maybe a flurry here or there), which is at least something to be thankful for. Wednesday will again be a seasonably cold day, with no weather of note.

Long Range

The long range is…you guessed it, ugly. At this point the GFS model (a longer range model) doesn’t show us even getting to the freezing mark in the next ten days. While this may be an overly pessimistic forecast, it is certainly possible given the extensive snowpack over the Eastern Prairies. We can only hope it is wrong, and perhaps we’ll see at least some melting, however minimal, by the weekend.