A plow clears a walking trail along Police Point Drive.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
From a bone-chilling polar vortex in January to the warmest December on record, the weather in southeastern Alberta has been all over the map the past couple months.
Last Friday, Balzac Billy predicted six more weeks of winter weather on Groundhog Day, however the El Niño weather pattern could prove his prediction wrong.
Environment Canada meteorologist Alysa Pederson tells the News ‘strong El Niño effects’ have caused a warming in the region that is above average.
“Typically this is a normal thing for any El Niño year, we’ll have bigger extremes but more of those extremes will be on the warm side, so we ended up coming out warmer than normal,” says Pederson.
She says in 2023 Medicine Hat had an extremely dry November that led into the warmest December on record, as well as one of the driest with only 3.3 millimetres of precipitation.
“Looking at winter and where we’re at, Medicine Hat has only really gotten 20 to 22 millimetres of precipitation since the start of December,” says Pederson. “So it is quite significantly lower than what we would usually see about this time of year.”
She explains the El Niño pattern will typically push spring storms to the north of the province and into the Northwest Territories, or south toward California and the southern states, leaving this region drier than normal.
“So, we’re warm and dry and Northwest Territories is typically a little bit wetter, and they are down in California as well,” says Pederson.
Pederson says Alberta typically receives the most snowfall in March and April and receives the most rainfall in May and June.
That snowfall is important because it makes up a portion of the precipitation for the moisture table of Alberta.
And more importantly, a good snowpack helps prolong the spring melt providing more water for local producers and ranchers.
“If we have a larger snowpack, the melt of that helps the spring green up a little bit. Obviously the more moisture we get the better to help drought, but what we really need is good soaking rains in the spring to really help out the area,” explains Pederson.
Environment Canada is forecasting a fairly mild week in Medicine Hat with some snowfall and flurries expected to begin Wednesday night and temperatures climbing back above zero on Sunday.
