Tag: warm

A Beautiful Weekend Ahead

Brad Leave a comment

Our left-over moisture will slowly clear out today and tonight ushering in a beautiful weekend with plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures. With Winnipeg’s average daytime high sitting at around -8°C right now, we can expect to see tempeatures nearly 10°C above normal by the end of the weekend!

Sunny Skies

Many areas in Southern Manitoba that are typically covered in snow at this time of year are completely bare. PHOTO BY ERIN GARDIN.

We’ll see a mix of sun and cloud here in Winnipeg today, with the ever-present chance of a few snowflakes, but any snow that does develop will be less significant than the few light flurries we saw yesterday in the city. The daytime high today will be cooler than yesterday, around -4°C, as a trough of cool air aloft swings over Southern Manitoba. The snow much of the Red River Valley recieved between 2 and 5cm of on Wednesday as a shortwave embedded in an upper trough swung across the province will not be sticking around for very long. An upper ridge has begun to build into the Prairies and will continue it’s trek into Southern Manitoba over the next two days. Here in Winnipeg, we’ll see winds switch around to southerly overnight tonight, which will usher in milder air and push our temperatures up for the weekend.

Upper Ridging

GEM-REG 500mb Winds valid 12Z Friday Feb. 17 (6AM CST)

We’ll see temperatures soar this weekend with a light south-southwest flow and mild air pushing in aloft. 850mb temperatures are expected to increase to slightly above 0°C by Sunday night, which will ensure that through the weekend we have daytime highs of 0°C – 3°C in Winnipeg.

Temperatures are expected to reach as high as +2°C this weekend; that’s 10°C above normal for Winnipeg at this time of year.

Any areas that manage to return to snow-free quickly will be able to add a couple degrees to those temperatures. Overnight lows will still be cool, with temperatures dropping down to around -11°C tonight and tomorrow night.

By Sunday, a low-pressure system will begin ambling it’s way out of Alberta into Saskatchewan. This will increase the southerly upper-level flow and provide the needed kick to really push those 850mb temperatures up. With the dramatically warmer 850mb temperatures in place, our overnight low on Sunday night will essentially be just a degree or two cooler whatever the daytime high makes it to.

The low will then track eastwards across Manitoba Monday into Tuesday. Models disagree significantly on what will happen happen for Winnipeg, with some giving us 5 to 10cm of snow and others keeping the precipitation 250 miles away from us. We’ll certainly keep our eyes on this system as it develops!

Weather? What Weather?

Brad Leave a comment

Our exceptionally unexceptional February continues with very little in the way of weather. After a mild, but dull, day today we’ll be back to sunshine and seasonal to slightly above seasonal temperatures.

Precipitation Outlook

12hr. QPF from the GEM-REG, valid at 06Z Thursday February 16 (1AM Local Time)

A very weak upper trough is moving over the region today, bringing with it cloud and a slight chance of flurries. The risk is greatest in areas south of the Trans-Canada Highway, from The Brandon/Pilot Mound regions eastwards into the Whiteshell. SLRs are expected to climb up to 15:1 to 20:1 range, so some areas closer to the US Border or into the Whiteshell may see as much as 2cm of snow. It’s unlikely that Winnipeg will see even 1cm of snow today.

The rest of the week will be sunny with daytime highs near -3°C and overnight lows near -10°C. There’s a slight chance of some snow on the latter half of the weekend, but we’ll leave that for discussing on Friday.

Updates to the Mobile Site

Some of you may be familiar with the U of M Weather Central: Mobile site that I maintain. Well, (in a Professor Farnsworth voice)…

Good news, everybody!

I’m working on updating the site as we speak. It’s no small task, as it’s a pretty comprehensive site, but I’m working on making it better than ever! A task which doesn’t seem too difficult, given I made the old one (which serves its purpose adequately) while learning how to code. Anyways, here are my goals for the redesign:

  • Utilize the latest mobile technologies to provide a modern, compelling experience that is well-supported across the mobile space (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7).
  • Improve the page layout and design to visually group information better and to provide quick access to all available information.
  • Utilize responsive design so that the page layout will optimize itself for phones, iPads, or desktop computers!
  • Fix long-standing bugs from the old code (incorrect forecast icons, among others).
  • Enhance existing features. One example is that the site now uses the sunrise and subset times of a city to calculate when to change from daytime to nighttime imagery.
  • Broaden Canada-wide support.
  • New features! Mobile model viewer! Mobile satellite Viewer! Mobile RADAR viewer! And more!

These are the main goals. The biggest hurdle is moving everything from a pure PHP solution to a tightly integrated jQuery/PHP solution. I plan on developing what will essentially be APIs to retrieve the data and provide a JSON-encoded response. What does that mean? The site will be fast, versatile, and standards-compliant. I also plan on making the .PHP files public so that people can easily access select Environment Canada data in a practical, modern way.

I think this new site will be really great and hands down the number-one way to get weather data on the go (and hopefully it’ll be good enough you’ll use it at home too!).

Pleasant Weekend Ahead…Enjoy It!

Brad Leave a comment

Winnipeg, along with the rest of Southern Manitoba, will enjoy a very pleasant weekend with temperatures climbing above 0°C over the next few days before a cold front sweeps through Southern Manitoba on Monday morning.

Foggy Winnipeg

A foggy morning in Winnipeg; submitted by JJ.

Winnipeg and the Red River Valley will enjoy a beautiful weekend with most cloud clearing out by this afternoon. Daytime highs will continue to climb over the next three days, with highs climbing to near 1 to 2°C today and Saturday, and getting up to nearly 4°C on Sunday.

Our warm temperatures, combined with light winds forecast for tonight means that fog will likely redevelop through many areas in the RRV; if it makes a return tonight, it will be the fourth night in a row with fog in Winnipeg and surrounding areas. Winds are forecast to increase through the night on Saturday night to 10-15km/h which should be enough to prevent fog from forming again.

Sunday Morning Prognosis

Analysis of the 72h prognosis from the GEM-Global, valid 12Z Sunday morning. Warm fronts and cold fronts are represented by red and blue lines, respectively.

The next change in the weather will be coming on Monday morning to Southern Manitoba. Through the weekend, a powerful low pressure system will track through the NWT into the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. This system will shift the large-scale pattern over the center of the continent and will allow arctic air that has been trapped unusually far north over the past couple weeks to spill southwards across the Eastern Prairies. The cold front will sweep across Manitoba on Sunday and push through Winnipeg by Monday morning.

This will bring brisk northerly winds to us for Monday and temperatures that gradually fall through the day. Currently it looks like we could see temperatures as low as -26°C on monday night into tuesday morning. Very little moisture is associated with this system, and current indications are that there will be very little or no snow with the passage of the cold front. Temperatures will be a little below normal on Tuesday and Wednesday, with daytime highs a little below -10°C.

A Pleasant Week

Brad Leave a comment

Now that we’ve gotten our uncertain snow systems out of the way, Winnipeg will enjoy a pleasant rest of the week with mild temperatures and increasingly sunny skies.

500mb Winds & Heights

500mb Heights & Winds valid 12Z Thursday morning, Februrary 2nd, 2012.

As this week progresses, we’ll see a zonal upper flow begin to amplify slowly as upper-level ridging builds into the Prairies. This will result in a fairly simple forecast:

  • We should expect daytime highs close to freezing, moving towards slightly above freezing (2 or 3°C) by the weekend, with overnight lows between -10°C and -5°C.
  • We’ll have just a very slight chance of flurries this morning and Thursday morning as a couple weak troughs pass through the Red River Valley associated with some weak shortwaves that are embedded in the amplifying upper level flow.
  • We should see the sun poke out in a mix of sun and clouds this afternoon, and then see clearing skies overnight. We should then see mostly sunny skies for the rest of the week!

The long-term forecast looks pretty quiet, with most major systems keeping well south of Manitoba and upper ridging dominating our weather pattern. Long-range models hint at a high over low block setting up over the Northwestern United States in the 7-10 day range, which would allow colder arctic air to spill southwards over Saskatchewan and Manitoba; but that’s a long ways off and could all change! For the rest of this week, we’ll be enjoying above-normal temperatures and finish the week with plenty of sunshine.

And for those who are curious, Rob has written up a good summary of this past January’s temperatures on his blog. This January was the 3rd warmest January on record, coming in behind the January 1944 and January 2006. This comes right after the 9th mildest December on record, and pushes our streak of months with above normal temperatures to 7 consecutive months!