Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Nice week ahead.. turning wet and colder for Easter weekend, snow possible for parts of western MB..
High pressure over the Prairies will provide a nice stretch of weather over southern MB over the next few days with sunshine and mild temperatures expected through Friday. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the nice weather will hold through the upcoming Easter weekend as a storm system develops over the northern States and tracks along the international border. This system is expected to bring rain across southern MB Saturday and Saturday night which may turn to snow over western MB and higher elevations Saturday night into Sunday as colder air wraps into the system. It's still too early to say which areas will get the snow if any from this system, but at this point, travellers should be aware of the potential for a return to winter like conditions for Easter Sunday particularly towards the Saskatchewan border and higher elevations of western Manitoba.
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Check out ROB's facebook page for a link to some amazing photos and video of the Dallas tornados today!
ReplyDeleteI noticed something on April 1 that I'd like a weather expert to explain. Between 5-6 PM the sky was filled with thin quilted clouds. That led me to think what conditions create that type of cloud. For instance, are there two distinct temperature layers or is one layer moving quickly and the other slowly? The quilts remind me of the crests of waves.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful day on tap with clear blue skies, light winds, mid teen temperatures and low humidity. In fact, humidity is forecast to fall to 20% or lower this afternoon with 20-25C dewpoint spreads.. Luckily winds are light today otherwise it would make for elevated fire conditions. Winds pick up Thursday into Friday which could increase the fire risk.
ReplyDeleteAs for the weekend system, Euro and Cdn models are trending further northwest on low, which spares much of southern MB from snow, but still could be an issue over eastern SK into Riding and Duck Mountains into central MB. GFS maintaining a further south track, but appears to be an outlier based on ensembles.
box134.. I would need a photograph of those clouds to give you a more accurate answer, but sometimes that wave effect is caused by strong winds aloft and changes in stability of the airmass. Water vapour in clouds will rise up but will hit a stable layer of air which causes the air to sink and dry up. The air descends into an unstable layer and rises up again, only to hit that stable layer again. This pattern of up and down motion is repeated creating that wave like pattern you saw.
ReplyDeleteFor weather geeks with a Canada-wide interest: I've updated my RADAR Viewer with all the RADAR sites across Canada. Only McGill and Britt have a few quirks, but the rest have the full suite of products for up to 2 days!
ReplyDeletehttp://aweathermoment.tumblr.com
Great stuff Brad.. thanks!
ReplyDeleteFor those of you not aware of Brad's radar viewer on his "A Weather Moment" website, I highly recommend it. Vastly superior to the very basic radar images you get from Weatheroffice, easier to navigate, and you can get loops back for 6 hours or more. Also has precip accumulation products and zoom capabilities which will be nice as we get into convective season. Note the radar viewer doesn't work on Internet Explorer, but works great on other browsers, plus mobile platforms.
Model viewer and satellite viewer also very handy!
Thought you'd like it, Rob. Now we can keep tabs on what's happening over the rolling fields of peaches & Cream corn in Southern Ontario :)
DeletePeriods of snow and windy on Sunday!! Does this look like a storm or just a few hours of wet snow??
ReplyDeletedaniel..
ReplyDeleteThat snowy Sunday forecast was an automated forecast based on last night's GLB model which showed the weekend storm system crossing southern MB and bringing wrap around snow into YWG and RRV Sunday. Ensembles and other guidance have been suggesting a track further northwest with little or no snow for southern MB, and instead falling through Swan River into the northern Interlake areas. Indeed, today's GLB run has trended in that direction as well, so at this point, I would say the threat of snow looks minimal for YWG and RRV Sunday.
New model runs tonight really wind up this system over western MB Friday night into Saturday, with area of heavy rain over eastern SK Friday changing to heavy snow Friday night into Saturday. GEM is painting 35 mm of rain over Quill Lakes area Friday followed by 30 cm of snow into Saturday. Models may be overdoing QPF amounts based on convective feedback as there will be instability on the warm side of this system with thunderstorms possible. All in all, a pretty energetic system likely developing, luckily with greatest impact well to the north and west of YWG and RRV along the SK border.
ReplyDeleteLooks like quite the storm out west this weekend. For us.....HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT!
ReplyDeleteWe have returned to winter here in Regina. A few 30 cm drifts around the yard from the relentless wind. Guessing at about 10 cm on average so far. As much in one dump as we saw all winter! Looks like it is almost over fortunately.
ReplyDeleteSee
http://users.accesscomm.ca/saskweather/stationwebcam.htm
Thank goodness we're missing that, ty Dean for the report. Stay warm and cozy indoors kind of day!
ReplyDeleteDean.. Looks awful.. Bring back March! ;)
ReplyDeleteNo snow here in Winnipeg, but some light snow now falling over wester MB in Brandon and Dauphin and along the SK border. Turning blustery and colder here with frequent gusts of 70-75 kmh being reported to our west. Not a pleasant day out there after a nice week. Looks cool for the next few days before moderating later in the week.
Rob I noticed that 'Winterpeg' isn't really so wintery after all.
ReplyDeleteHow can WPG be coldest city over 600,000 if Edmonton's normal yearly temperature (mean temp.) is colder than ours? Unfair :P
Also noticed Saskatoon's is colder as well. I don't know but in my eyes, WPG really isn't THAT cold, based on the yearly normal.
Just an observation
Happy Easter to Everyone!
ReplyDeleteTo everyone on this blog:
I wanted to ask you, do you believe someday ,that computers will become so powerful that they will be able to forecast the weather with pinpoint accuracy months at at time???
Do you believe in the far future that humans will be able to fully control the weather or is that out of the hands of humans>>
Thoughts??
daniel.. my own personal viewpoint is that computer models will never be able to provide pinpoint forecast accuracy weeks in advance. It’s impossible. Weather is a chaotic system that's constantly in a state of flux. A computer model, no matter how powerful, would have to be able to model every atmospheric perturbation in the world and accurately propogate them around the globe to come up with the type of pinpoint accuracy people may want a couple of weeks ahead. Not only that, computer models would have to be able to ingest highly accurate surface and upper air data, including precise atmospheric stability, winds, humidity and cloud cover, ocean temperatures, soil temperatures and moisture profiles, snow and ice cover data, and accurately simulate their progression and interaction with each other over the course of days and weeks. It’s just too complex a problem to model accurately and consistently. Not only that, but things that can influence the weather down the road may not have even happened yet (e.g. a volcanic eruption, a heavy thunderstorm with flooding rains in an area, a forest fire, an unforeseen snowstorm, etc) that will affect the future state of the weather in a particular area. These random and unpredictable events will affect the future outcome of the weather, making it impossible to predict with 100% precision after a certain period of time. One only has to look at how high resolution models perform even within the first 12-24 hours to realize that no matter how detailed and powerful computer models are, they have limited ability to predict the exact future state of the atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteImproved models may be able to give a better idea of trends in the future (ie whether it will be warmer or colder than normal, wetter or drier than normal, enhanced probability of severe weather, etc).. but planning an afternoon golf game two weeks from today.. well, I think you’ll still be at the mercy of Mother Nature’s whims.