Thursday, January 31, 2013

Bundle up.. it's a cold one out there!

Cold weather is back in Winnipeg and southern Manitoba.. with temperatures today forecast to remain in the minus 20s, and brisk northwest winds of 20-30 km/h producing wind chills in the minus 30s.  Even colder air is found over western Manitoba where wind chill warnings are currently in place. For Winnipeg, morning clouds and flurries will give way to clearing skies and sunshine today as a ridge of high pressure over Saskatchewan gradually pushes east. This ridge will move over southern MB tonight giving clear but very cold conditions with temperatures dropping into the minus 30 to minus 35 range. Sunny skies and cold temperatures are forecast for Friday with high temperatures only in the minus 20s. Winds however will be light which will make the cold weather more tolerable.  A clipper system is forecast to bring some light snow and moderating temperatures to the RRV Saturday with colder temperatures again Sunday. Long range guidance is indicating a trend towards more normal temperatures next week as the Arctic airmass gradually retreats.  

20 comments:

  1. With the cold weather, the bad roads, the gridlocks during rush hours, all the sicknesses going around (I've never been sick this often in several years)... I can't wait for this winter to end!

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  2. With the cold weather and the awesome amount of snow, I don't want this winter to end! Best winter in years! I love Winnipeg!!

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  3. That GEM Global sure has it in for us, again forecasting -43C tonight, a high of -30C tomorrow, then -44C Friday night!!! Time to improve the model perhaps.

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  4. Hey Rob, you had mentioned a few days ago that you measured 42cm in your yard, and that your record was 51cm. You think we'll surpass that and have the most snow on the ground since 1997??

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  5. I can't find the daily environment Canada link. Are we going to be below normal for January?

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  6. According to this graph

    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/global_monitoring/temperature/tn71852_30.gif

    we're about 1C above normal for January. I find that VERY hard to believe.

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  7. But it's true. The climate normal (1971-2000) daily average temp for January is -17.8 C. Up till yesterday, we were -16.3 C average. It was a warm January. Puts last year into perspective!

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  8. The normal for January is in reality -16.4°C (using 1981-2010 normals).
    That would put us bang on normal up to the 30th. You can thank that on a mild start though which averaged several degrees above normal during the first 10 days. The last 19 days (Jan 12-30) of the month averaged -20.5°C, a significant 4 degrees below normal.

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  9. That's correct. Using the new 1981-2010 normals (which is the international standard now), January now has a normal of -16.4c for Winnipeg, which is over a degree above the previous 30 year normal. As anonymous said, it was a mild spell over the first 10 days that boosted our average this month. So yes, bang on normal.. but not if you use last year as "normal" (which would be nice if that was truly normal!)

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  10. -29.4 at 6:13 PM. Its just awful out there with the breeze.

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  11. If 1981-2010 is recognized as the new international standard for normals, perhaps someone better inform Environment Canada and NOAA to start using it. EC is still showing the 1981-2000 ones and NOAA is still graphing based on those.

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  12. -33.7 in Headingley right now!

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  13. Environment Canada has still not officially published the 1981-2010 normals. Let's hope it will be soon.

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  14. Rob's station is the coldest in Winnipeg right now, by 1.5 C. Interesting.

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  15. Hey Rob,

    Does it still look like the clipper on the weekend will miss us?

    thanks

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  16. Well I see EC changed Mondays forecast from sunny to 60% chance of flurries which I believe really means that the forecast will change again to periods of snow. At least that seems to be the way EC does their forecasting. I guess they just try and break it to us slow.

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  17. 1 cm of snow is about equal to 1 mm of rain. A flurry can easily amount to only 1 or 2 cm of snow. We don't expect forecasts accurate to 1 or 2 mm of rain, so why demand accuracy for 1 or 2 cm of snow? It may impact your life/business, but perhaps some people expect a bit too much from the 1 or 2 forecasters sitting in that chair, forecasting for much of western Canada and the arctic.

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  18. Aren't the forecasts automated (made only by computers)?

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  19. Well yes, anything past 48hrs is fully automated. And only mentions precip which occurs during the day, as though waking up to 10cm of snow doesn't matter.

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  20. The latest ensemble run has us back into the deep freeze yet again in mid February. Hopefully it's wrong.

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