Monday, October 22, 2007

Windy week ahead..

A weak weather system will track into central MB tonight and into northwest Ontario Tuesday morning. This system will bring a few showers through the northern interlake and central MB regions tonight possibly mixing with some wet snow in places. As the system tracks into northwest Ontario Tuesday morning, gusty northwest winds will develop behind the system over southern MB with northwest winds of 40 to 60 km/h possible through midday Tuesday.

By Wednesday a more potent system coming off the Pacific is forecast to track across far northern SK moving north of the MB/NU border on Thursday. This system is forecast to deepen into an intense storm over Hudson Bay on Thursday into Friday, with very strong northwest winds and blizzard conditions possible over the Hudson Bay coastline including Churchill and much of the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. South of this intensifying storm system, gusty south to southwest winds will bring milder conditions over the southern Prairies by Wednesday with temperatures climbing to the 20 degree mark over southern SK and southwest MB on Wednesday. Look for gusty southerly winds of 40 to 60 km/h or more over the Red River valley on Wednesday with highs in the mid teens. The milder weather will be short lived however as gusty northwest winds on the backside of the intense Hudson Bay storm drives cooler weather across the eastern Prairies for the end of the week.

4 comments:

  1. Let us know when there is a chance of snow in the forecast. In my opinion it is better if it is snowing when it is cold. Some exciting weather would be nice.

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  2. Although not very exciting...it is a really cold night outside. Winnipeg airport is the cold spot in all of southern Manitoba save for Wasagaming at the moment. Even the adjacent CWB stations at Rosser and Brunkild are nearly 2 degrees warmer than the airport. I imagine these are in very open locations as well.

    Anyways...could Environment Canada give a forecast for the city based on the Forks station like is done for Edmonton City Centre Airport? The Forks is not a fully fledged station like Edmonton City Centre but some common sense should be applied. Stay warm.

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  3. Got down to -4.3C at YWG airport early this morning, while the low at the Forks was only +1, so downtown still has yet to see an official frost this season.

    Looking at this morning's lows across the city, we had..

    East St Paul... -1.8C
    Transcona...... -1.4C
    Charleswood... -2.4C
    Whyte Ridge... -2.2C
    St Vital...... -0.9C
    Deer Lodge.... -0.7C
    U of W........ +1.5C

    The table shows much of the city saw frost last night except the downtown core. Generally, basing the forecast on the Winnipeg airport site is sufficient for the city.. but in some cases (clear skies, light winds from the northwest) there can be a large temperature difference between downtown and the airport. In these cases, it would be helpful to give a range of expected temperatures (e.g. lows of -3 except plus 1 downtown) However, since forecast verification is only done for the airport site, this extra information is usually not added in the forecast.

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  4. A few things...

    There certainly was a widespread frost last nite and even freeze (<-2C) in outlying parts of the city.

    Why dosen't Environment Canada do model verification for the Forks site? Is it because is not a full weather station? If they give seperate forecast for the city of Edmonton and the international airport ...seems like the same could be done for Winnipeg.

    It is very interesting to note that the CWB stations at Rosser and Brunkild both dropped only to -2.3C. These are presumably in open agricultural areas much like the airport... yet had similar temperatures to outlying parts of the city. If one would plot the values on a map...YWG would stand out like a sore thumb.

    It is possible that the CWB sites are next to buildings etc... but the trends should be followed ... it may turn out that YWG is not even representative of agricultural areas northwest of Winnipeg. Who knows ... maybe there is an 'airport cold island' effect.

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