Summer-like warmth has arrived for Winnipeg and the Red River Valley thanks to an upper-level ridge moving into the region that will spread warm air over Manitoba for the coming days. Some rain looks likely on Thursday evening as a “cool” front passes, but the other days through the second half of the week look beautiful with plenty of sun to go along with the warmer weather.
Today will be a mainly sunny day with a high near 21°C. Winds will remain fairly light through the day as well. With an overnight low near 8°C or so, the warmth should hang on into the evening making for a pleasant evening to be outside.
Thursday will bring a fair amount of cloud, however the sun will still poke out a few times through the day. Winds will be breezy out of the south, picking up to around 30–40km/h with gusts to 50–60km/h or so. Heading into the second half of the afternoon should really bring in the thicker cloud ahead of the approaching “cool” front. A band of showers will move in sometime between 6–9PM and last for a few hours as they move through.
The RDPS shows around 2mm of rain through much of southern Manitoba associated with the passage of a “cool” front on Thursday evening. Image above is total accumulations from Thursday evening at 7PM to Friday morning at 7AM.
Precipitation is expected to be fairly light, however, with total accumulations around 2mm, although if the odd convective cell gets going, some places may see closer to the 5mm mark. Winds will taper off with the passage of the front and temperatures will drop to around the 7°C mark with clearing skies overnight.
Friday will be another pleasant day with light winds, mainly sunny skies and a high near 21°C. Expect a low near 8°C on Friday night.
We’ll see some shower activity today as a frontal zone remains stalled through southern Manitoba. Conditions will improve rapidly by Tuesday however, as sunny skies return.
A frontal zone in southern Manitoba will bring some rain showers to the region on Monday
Monday
We will receive some light rain today as a frontal zone is draped through southern Manitoba. Rainfall accumulations will be small in general, not amounting to more than a few millimetres in most cases. Despite the rain, temperatures will climb into the low teens under mainly cloudy skies and light winds.
Tuesday
Tuesday looks to be a beautiful day as temperatures climb into the mid to upper teens under mainly sunny skies. Winds will remain as we sit under a surface high, making for very nice conditions!
Wednesday
Wednesday looks to be even nicer than Tuesday, as temperatures climb into the low twenties under mainly sunny skies. Winds will be a bit stronger than on Tuesday, but not by a lot. An approaching low pressure system will be responsible for pumping these increasingly warm temperatures into Manitoba.
Long Range
Weather models suggest we’ll continue to see above-seasonal temperatures for the remainder of the week. Further out into the long-range the forecast is a bit uncertain, so I won’t delve into that right now. Get out and enjoy what should be a great week (aside from Monday)!
This week’s weather will be significantly cooler than what we experienced last week as a upper-level system to our east pulls down chillier air from the north.
Cool weather will prevail on Monday under a stiff northerly flow
Monday
Today will be cool, cloudy, and precipitation-y. We’ll see some mixed showers and flurries throughout the day as a strong low pressure system exits our region. High temperatures will be in the mid single digits, meaning that even if it does snow it won’t stick around for long. Winds will be gusty due to the departure of that weather system, with values from the northwest of 40km/h gusting to 60km/h.
Tuesday
Tuesday will remain cool and breezy, but we will see some sun! High temperatures will be in the upper single digits under mainly sunny skies. Winds will be northerly at 20-30 km/h, making it feel on the chilly side.
Wednesday
Wednesday will be slightly cooler than Tuesday as more cool air pours in from the north. High temperatures will be in the mid to upper single digits, but skies will remain mainly sunny. Winds will be northerly at 20-30km/h once again
Long Range
The long range forecast suggests that this cooler pattern will stick around for at least the rest of the week. A persistent trough is expected to remain parked just to our east, meaning that cool air will be continually pumped into southern Manitoba during the short to medium-term. However, in the longer range this pattern is expected to break-down, ushering in a return of more seasonal conditions.
The unseasonably warm weather that’s been in place over Southern Manitoba will remain for a couple more days before a big shift in the weather pattern behind a low pressure system passing through on Sunday that will bring cooler air back to the region for next week. The shift in conditions will be quite a shock to the system after a pleasant stretch of above-normal temperatures looks to be replaced with the potential of a return to…snowier conditions.
Today will be a fairly pleasant day in the Winnipeg area. On Wednesday we had mentioned the possibility that today might be another very windy day but, thankfully, it looks like the system that guidance suggested would be a bit of a trouble-maker has ended up weaker and further north than it appeared earlier in the week. As such, we’ll see slightly warmer temperatures with a high near 18°C with somewhat breezy northwesterlies developing to around 30 gusting 50km/h. Tonight will bring mainly clear skies and a low near 3°C with light winds.
Saturday is looking like another beautiful day as warm air surges northwards ahead of Sunday’s low pressure system. Winds will be a bit breezy out of the south to southeast at around 20–30km/h in the morning but will likely taper off a bit into the afternoon, making for an exceptionally pleasant sunny afternoon with a high near 20°C and fairly calm winds. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. Cloud will move in on Saturday evening and through the overnight period as a low pressure system pushes northwards out of the Central Plains of the United States. Expect a low near 6°C.
Sunday Brings Showers & Transition to Cooler Weather
Forecast 1000–500mb Thickness Sunday into Monday
Sunday will mark the transition into a cooler air mass as a fairly complex pattern change gets underway. The weather will be dominated by two primary features: a low pressure system lifting north-northeast out of the Northern Plains of the US and a shortwave moving into Manitoba from Saskatchewan. The two systems will undergo a complex merging and look to stall out a bit over Northern Ontario. This stalling out will resulting in an amplification of the long-wave trough developing over the region resulting in a plunge of colder air southwards over the Eastern Prairies. This is reflected very nicely in the above graphic which shows the forecast 1000–500mb thicknesses[1] plunging behind the low pressure system.
So what does that mean for Sunday? Well, there’s a bit of ambiguity as to what will happen here in Winnipeg as a lot will depend on the exact timing of and how the two systems merge. We’ll definitely see cloudy skies, likely see a very good chance of showers through the day. Precipitation will fall as rain for most of the day, but likely switch over to snow sometime in the early evening. Snowfall amounts won’t be big, however a couple cm are certainly possible.
The high on Sunday will be near 10°C with a slight northwesterly breeze. Temperatures will drop just below freezing on Sunday night. Rainfall totals of 5–10mm are possible with 2–3cm of snow possible on Sunday night.
Long Range
Heading into Monday, it looks like the Red River Vally will see flurries, highs near the freezing mark and blustery northwest winds. After that, the rest of the week looks fairly quiet with little in the way of precipitation expected. Daytime highs through much of the week will be more than 5°C below the seasonal values of 11–12°C.
The 1000–500mb thickness is the distance, or thickness, between the 1000mb level (near-surface) and 500mb level (averages around 18,000ft and is often considered the steering flow for weather systems). Higher thickness values correlate to warmer temperatures and lower thicknesses correlate to colder temperatures. ↩
