Monday 10 March 2014

A Look Ahead

     A fantastic day today with temperatures above zero in almost all of southern Manitoba. Even Winnipeg airport has creeped above zero, reaching its warmest temperature in 2 months, since January 15. Warmer values inside city limits with highs between 4 and 7°C. Enjoy it while it lasts... colder weather returns tomorrow and Wednesday. Highs will be below zero, but it wont be an extreme cold by any means with highs remaining in the minus single digits. However, lows may dip below -20°C tomorrow night.

     Warm air returns on Thursday with a high likelihood of above zero temperatures again. Highs will likely be similar to today's.

     Some colder air moves in for the weekend. At this point, it appears we may lean towards more of a colder than normal trend next week as well (but not as extreme as what we've seen).  There may also be a clipper system or two to watch for, with more snow possible to start next week. Details to come as the days get closer.

     Normal highs next week will be in the -1°C to +2°C range and normal lows between -8°C and -10°C (1981-2010 normal).

21 comments:

  1. All the way up to 7°C in parts of Winnipeg today.. A decent melting of the snow pack as well. Snow depth at my place all the way down to 49 cm today, down from 57 cm just 3 days ago.

    Highs today in the city as of 5 pm:
    Charleswood 7.1°C
    South St Vital 7.0°C (me)
    The Forks 5.9°C
    Winnipeg airport 3.2°C

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  2. Snow depth down to 47 cm now at my place; was quite the melt yesterday with a 4-6 cm reduction in snow pack here.

    Back to the cold as expected today. -10°C seemed warm a week ago, but felt cold today! We'll drop close to or just below -20°C tonight. Next warmup starts tomorrow with a strong south wind in the PM hours. Some light snow possible in the afternoon and evening, which would result in some drifting snow. Not expecting much accumulations here, with less than 2 cm. We'll warm nicely for Thursday above zero again.

    Enjoy Thursday as we return to below normal conditions for Friday and the weekend.

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  3. Do you think we will break the record....11pm-27 in Gimli?

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    1. Not even close to a record in Winnipeg this morning. Low was -21.5°C, old record -33.9°C in 1880.

      Dipped below -30°C in Gimli overnight, however I don't have any records for that town at this time.

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    2. The earliest record I could Find was -29.4C and 80 mm of SOG in 1956 Other sites and years had results but none that beat these. !953 to 2014
      http://climate.weather.gc.ca/climateData/almanac_e.html?timeframe=4&Prov=MAN&StationID=3737&hlyRange=1953-01-01|1971-12-31&Year=1971&Month=3&Day=12&cmdB1=Go

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    3. Thanks JJ
      Anon1

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    4. Did some searching for Gimli records, and the old record for yesterday was -31.0°C in 2003. This makes yesterday's low of -30.8°C just shy of that record.

      http://climate.weather.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html?timeframe=2&Prov=MAN&StationID=6892&dlyRange=1993-11-01|2008-03-31&Year=2003&Month=3&Day=01

      Stations used for Gimli data:
      Gimli A (1944-1971)
      'Gimli' (1972-1991)
      'Gimli' (1993-2006)
      Gimli Climate (2007-present)

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  4. This may be something to be concerned about as GFS has been very consistent in showing a Colorado low in the long range. That's a concern for sure but we will say if other models pick up on that as well before getting too concerned about it.

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    1. For now, that seems way too distant in the future to be too worried about, but yes it has been showing some Colorado Low. We will have to wait for more consensus among models as you say. As long as this northwest flow aloft continues, the chance of a Colorado Low for us is low.

      In the close future, there's a clipper for Sunday-Tuesday that may bring some snow that will have to be watched. However, even that system has looked weaker in the last few runs.

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  5. I see the long range is not look very promising in terms of a steady melt over the next couple of weeks. We should see some melting but it will only be on a every few days basis. I'd say it's a sure bet we'll start April with a lot of snow on the ground once again. And to make matters worse we'll likely see more snow in that timeframe as well. At this point I would not rule out an April like 2013 because it's starting too shape up that way again this year. Yikes.

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    1. Yes no kidding, the little bit of optimism there was a few days ago is long gone. Long range not very promising at this time!

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    2. Will they update the long range on the 15th or will they wait till the end of march to do the next one after the one on Feb 28th?

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    3. Yikes, the NAEFS looks nasty in today's update! Hope that doesn't stay for long, but that's doubtful I suppose!
      http://weather.gc.ca/ensemble/naefs/semaine2_combinee_e.html

      And Anon, I assume you are speaking of the flood forecast. The next one is in late March sometime, I have no idea when though. I'm not sure if there even is a fixed date for it as all I could find was ''late March''.

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    4. I was Referring to CPC Monthly Outlook. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/30day/

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    5. The later into April we go for that big warmup the greater the chances of more precipitation and much quicker melt. Its not the current snow levels south of here that are of concern its the possibility of sizable additions to the snow pack there and having it melt quickly and arrive at the same time as our melt takes place. Fortunately there are open bare fields in southeast ND. 1979 is an apt comparative. Six feet high backyard snow drifts melted in two days mid april and flooded locally just as the crest of the RRV runoff arrived. Hot april Sun and two days of + 15 will do that to ripe snow.

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    6. I'm not sure how often CPC updates those 30-day forecasts, I haven't kept track of them that intensively. I thought it was once a month but I'm not 100% sure.

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  6. Yeah, I saw that update this morning also from NAEFS. Not good. The more positive outlook from a few days ago is long gone now. Could very well be another April like 2013. Ouch!!!

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  7. All the way up to 6°C here in south end this afternoon. More like 4°C at The Forks and 3°C at the airport.

    Warmest along the escarpment today, all the way up to 8.4°C in Portage and an ''amazing'' 10.8°C in McCreary as of 3pm. McCreary's high is interestingly close to the old record of 12.8°C back during March Madness 2012. However, they only have records back to the 1970's.

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  8. Highs today in Winnipeg:

    South St Vital 5.9°C
    Charleswood 5.3°C
    The Forks 4.6°C
    Airport 4.0°C

    May be a while before we see temperatures this warm again.

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  9. Yeah, the sense of optimism from the models late last week is long gone. Hope everyone enjoyed today because we'll be lucky to get that warm again this month. Latest long range looks very grim for us meaning we may have to wait yet another month for this horrible winter to let go. More winter than Spring in store for us especially for the remainder of this month. Yikes.

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  10. Back to the cold! The next couple days look even colder than what it looked a couple days ago with lows into the -20's tonight and tomorrow night. We'll likely stay fairly steady in the mid minus teens today and tomorrow as well.

    Sunday into Sunday night becomes a little more interesting as that clipper system that has been advertised for almost a week now moves in. It's looking quite likely now that we'll see snow, and it may be heavy at times, aided by a strong southerly low-level jet. However, the worst of the snow looks short-lived, likely lasting less than 6 hours with some light snow still possible behind the main snow. In total, 3-6 cm looks possible at this point. Winds look strong on Sunday as well which will bring some significant blowing snow in open areas of the RRV.

    Beyond that, it looks like continued below normal conditions with a couple brief warmer days in between, now as normal highs reach the freezing mark. However, thankfully, at least the cold does not look extreme at this point.

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