Another low pressure system developing over the Yukon Territory will push milder air into Manitoba tomorrow and return us to normal-becoming-above-normal temperatures by the end of the weekend. This low pressure system will slide southwards through the province on Sunday, bringing some light snow with it.

Today

Mostly cloudy with periods of light snow.
-13°C / -18°C

The Red River Valley will be mainly cloudy today as a mass of stratus pushes down from Central Manitoba, sliding southwards into North Dakota, bringing periods of light snow throughout the Red River Valley. Temperatures will climb to around –13°C this afternoon and temperatures will drop to around –18°C tonight as skies clear this evening.

Saturday

Saturday

Mix of sun and cloud. Patchy flurries in the afternoon.
-6°C / -8°C

The warm front will push across the Red River Valley through Saturday afternoon, pushing our daytime highs up to an above-seasonal –6°C. Skies will become a mix of sun and cloud as the warm front moves in which, when combined with 850mb temperatures sitting near –10°C, will produce some scattered flurries across the Red River Valley. Skies will completely cloud over on Saturday night with temperatures falling to and remaining steady near –8°C.

Sunday

Sunday

Light snow beginning in the afternoon. 2-4*cm*.
-3°C / -7°C

Sunday will be the most active day of the bunch as this low pressure system finally pushes through. Temperatures will climb up to around –3°C as light snow pushes in midday. This system will not be particularly intense; total snowfall accumulations for the afternoon look to be only a couple cm. The light snow will persist through much of the night with another cm or two falling by morning as temperatures dip to about –10°C. Overall it looks like the Red River Valley will see less than 5cm of snow total with this system.

Some disagreement does exist within the models, in particular pertaining to the intensity of this system; the Canadian GDPS is, in particular, quite gung-ho on making this quite a potent system. It’s hard to tell what to make of it, considering it’s the outlier when compared to the other major models and this is the first significant weather system since CMC upgraded the GDPS on Wednesday claiming an improvement to the output “usually seen only once a decade.” Should the GDPS solution be the correct one, the forecast for Sunday should still hold up, save for the potential for a little more snow (closer to 4–6cm instead of 2–4cm). Monday, on the other hand, would likely be a significant winter storm with close to 10cm of snow falling and blizzard conditions through the Red River Valley (excluding the City of Winnipeg). The other models have just a couple cm of snow for Monday with breezy northwesterly winds, but nothing that would produce more than some local blowing snow. Right now, I think that the GDPS is digging the low out of SK too much and has it pushing too far south which would intensify the low too much and end up producing too much snow & wind. It looks more reasonable for a couple cm of snow and some breezy north winds producing just some local blowing snow.

So we’ll have an increasingly warm and mainly pleasant weekend ahead; Monday looks to be a wild card at this point, but holds the potential to be a significant winter storm event. We’ll post updated information as we get closer to the event in the comments below. Enjoy the long weekend!