Weathered Central Albertans thinking about easing up on the vigilance, be warned — winter is still coming.
With mostly milder temperatures making it seem like an almost winterless winter, it turns out Red Deer’s snowiest month is now upon us.
Environment Canada regional meteorologist Bill McMurtry said March tends to have more snow than other winter months.
That’s true for most of Alberta.
March is the time of year where warmer air that contains a lot more moisture comes in from the Pacific and moves inland across Western Canada.
As the jet stream starts to move northward, and over Southern and Central Alberta, combined with the remnants of cold air associated with winter, a lot of precipitation can occur, said McMurtry.
“Temperatures are still cold enough that we don’t get much in the way of rain in March. It tends to fall in the form of snow, and when we do get it we tend to get a lot of snow for a short period of time.”
Last March, Red Deer saw 44.8 cm of snow. Typically, the city gets 20.4 cm this month.
So far this winter, the three-month period of December, January and February was warmer than normal by about two degrees overall, McMurtry said.
December was about 2.8 degrees above average for the entire month and January was 3.1 degrees above average. February was below average by just 0.1 degree — basically it was an average February.
“Once you get more than one degree on average — that’s essentially saying every day for that entire period on average was two degrees above normal — that’s a pretty significant departure. Any time you’re more than one degree in either direction that’s a significant departure over a 90-day period,” said McMurtry.
“A lot of people thought February was warm but most locations came in at right around average values for the month. Because we had two months leading up to it that were well above average, it pretty well felt like it continued through the month of February where the winter overall has seen above normal temperatures.”
“Precipitation wise, people are saying there’s not a lot of precipitation but we are looking at — for the December, January, February period — about 58 cm of snow has fallen and normally about 46.6 cm would fall.
“We’ve had about 25 per cent more snow than we would typically see but it hasn’t really accumulated a lot because we’ve had some warm days where it’s melted, as opposed to previous years where it’s been colder. Particularly last year we had lots of snow but we also had lots of cold temperatures so the snow didn’t go away.”
As for wind, McMurtry said when warmer than average temperatures occur during winter, typically it’s wind that has brought the warmth into the area.
“Warmer temperatures and stronger winds tend to go hand in hand because you need that to bring that warm air from the Pacific into the Prairies and displace the cold arctic air that is sitting there.”
The strongest wind gust this winter was 72 km/h on Feb. 25. “That’s a big gust but not anything off the table,” McMurtry said.
He summed up this winter as “So far not bad.”
The city’s weather is actually recorded at Red Deer Airport.
It’s been colder with biting wind chills this week but the forecast does promise something better.
A pocket of warm air will move this way today and Friday and continue into early next week, perhaps through to next Wednesday, bringing gradual warming, and more melting.
The forecast on Tuesday showed a high of 8C by Sunday and a high of 10C on Monday.
That’s also without any snowfall in the forecast. But wait a few minutes, things could change.