North American Weather (U.S.A & Canada)

[shunthebartlett92]

1 hour ago, Roger J Smith said:

Have had a long association with this part of the world through family then we retired here three years ago (from the Vancouver area), we have suffered from bad forest fire smoke three of the last four summers though. Only 2020 was really clear of it. We escaped the 2018 smoke by going south, the deserts had almost no smoke as the California fire plume went up over Idaho and Montana most of the time and the BC smoke went into Alberta. Then 2019 we were around all summer and got some moderate smoke, this past summer was really bad and we had the heat dome for a week with 42-44 C daily highs. So you might want to stay put. 

This is the sad reality for BC'ers and Albertans, is that large swathes of the provinces are now affected every year by ravaging forest fire smoke. Vancouver is quite often under dense smoke for at least a week or two and sometimes even the island, there really is very little reprieve in a given summer. The yukon has also started having issues too, although their more moderate summer temperatures give them a little more immunity. That's the advantage of being in the UK, and also reduced 'quake' risk too, but you can't compare the beauty of western canada and the UK, there's only one clear winner as far as i'm concerned (and its not the UK!)

[Coopsy]

2 hours ago, CatchMyDrift said:

It really does get cold and stay cold for some of us:

 

Exactly as the long range called it last month. Quite impressed. Certainly going to be a cold spell coming up. 

[Coopsy]

Another snowy day in Canmore and looking at the forecast snow tomorrow and Christmas Day as it turns colder. Very much a white Christmas this year. 

[Coopsy]

8 minutes ago, CatchMyDrift said:

That was a quick temp fall when the cold air hit:

It's snizzling softly outside...pics to follow once we're back from Xmas shopping.

Blimey that’s certainly a flash freeze. I’ve seen the reverse during a chinook - that’s impressive 

[Coopsy]

3 hours ago, CatchMyDrift said:

The freezing fog turned everything white really quickly too, a nice surprise to wake up to at 5am.

It's slowly getting heavier and breezier, we should be on for a wee snowglobe afternoon where there is not much snow falling but loads blowing about:

Just looking back over my records and the one time I have recorded a flash freeze was when I was in Boston Pizza in Canmore. It went from around 0oC to -15oC by the time I’d finished eating (within the hour).

Accompanied by a lot of snow associated with the cold front. Here’s a pic from that night. Clear when I went in. 

Gotta love Canadian weather events you’d never really get in the UK. Never gets boring. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Coopsy

[Norrance]

Our friends from Northern Indiana where my daughter lived for a while are expecting a very different festive period. The forecast forChristmas day is for a max of +14C and by New Year's day +18C. Average max temps there at this time of year are 0C. 

[Coopsy]

Certainly a cold and snowy Christmas this year in Canmore...  currently minus 20. 

 

[Roger J Smith]

Had to laugh, the coldest place in Canada in the past hour was Deadman Valley NWT. That's in Nahanni National Park about 200 miles north of Fort Nelson BC. (-44.3 C). On the current weather map there's a long ridge of high pressure extending into Alaska from northeast Siberia. The Alaska centre is 1034 mbs and there's a bubble high of about 1028 mbs near Watson Lake in southeast Yukon. Temps generally -30 to -40 under this ridge. The Siberian centre is shown at 1056 mbs with temps near -50 C.

Off the coast of northwest WA state is a 985 mb low that connects to an inland centre near Spokane WA of 993 mbs. This is creating a snowstorm across the border region where I live, we have seen about 10 cm of snow since midnight here. Still in the moderate transitional air mass at about -4 C and thinking we may stay in this frontal zone for 2-3 days as the southward push of this arctic air is rather weak and more pulses of energy and moisture ripple through. It may keep the skies cloudy over large parts of southern Alberta and central BC also even if you're outside this ongoing snowfall zone. We could end up with 30-50 cms here by Monday at this rate. Cold air does reach the south coast and Puget Sound regions but does not keep pushing south because of further low pressure development from Oregon to southern Idaho over the 3-4 days ahead. Temps will slide down in all parts of BC but locally I don't think we'll get into the deep freeze until about Tuesday, the arctic front is going to form a wave over the Columbia valley just around the 50th parallel, winds will turn more east to northeast and mix in some of the much colder air that will get into the east Kootenay region (this is the west Kootenay region where I am). 

Anyway this is now the third major weather event of 2021 after the heat dome (late June early July) and the flooding rain and snowmelt event which was more severe to our west. We also had the worst forest fire smoke air quality alerts about a month after the heat wave. So it has been perhaps the most memorable weather year here, and not one that very many would want to repeat. . 

[Coopsy]

Merry Christmas all. Currently snowing nicely and minus 25 on a cold early Christmas morning in Canmore. Lots of snow around. Sadly warm and wet in England lol.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas day. 

[Coopsy]

An extreme cold weather warning is in place for every area in Alberta for the next week. Temps between minus 40 to minus 50.

To put that into perspective, that’s an area approx 2.5 times the size of the UK.  

I should add the cold warnings extend into British Columbia and Saskatchewan 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Coopsy

[johnholmes]

1 hour ago, Coopsy said:

An extreme cold weather warning is in place for every area in Alberta for the next week. Temps between minus 40 to minus 50.

To put that into perspective, that’s an area approx 2.5 times the size of the UK.  

I should add the cold warnings extend into British Columbia and Saskatchewan 

Grief-those figures are impossible to imagine for this island, for even one night

[Coopsy]

4 hours ago, johnholmes said:

Grief-those figures are impossible to imagine for this island, for even one night

 

3 hours ago, CatchMyDrift said:

It's currently a balmy -28C with some light snow. We're in the relatively milder part of Alberta, our lowest minimum will probably be about -35C but the windchill will be brutal on that:

 

The windchill is brutal. I’d take air temp of minus 40 over wind chill of minus 40 any day of the week. Though I’ve never been warmer in winter than in a Canadian house at minus 40 but coldest in a UK house in winter at minus 5 lol.

Wrap up warm folks! 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Coopsy

[Roger J Smith]

Slowly clearing from the north here, -17 C, wind chill -30. We have about 30 cms of new snow since 24th, just a snowglobe Christmas and Boxing Day then the intense cold hit last night. The coldest weather ever recorded in this part of the world was in Jan 1950, will be interesting to see if any all-time records from that winter are broken. If you hear about some place breaking an all-time record and that was in 1969 or some other more recent year, it probably didn't have records from 1950. Vancouver airport had -18 C that winter, so far I think the lowest there is around -11 C in this cold spell. Date records are falling all over the province but it seems like some of the more severe historical cold spells were on other dates so this is filling in some gaps. 

Pro tip for these temperatures, keep your vehicle gas tank close to full and have de-icer available if you get any gas line freeze problems. 

[snowblind]

Some unusually cold conditions in Seattle, Washington state at the moment. They had snow over the Christmas period with 3.4 inches on Boxing day. Pretty unusual for the normally rainy north west 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/12/27/snow-seattle-portland-winter/

[ANYWEATHER]

On 27/12/2021 at 20:33, Roger J Smith said:

Slowly clearing from the north here, -17 C, wind chill -30. We have about 30 cms of new snow since 24th, just a snowglobe Christmas and Boxing Day then the intense cold hit last night. The coldest weather ever recorded in this part of the world was in Jan 1950, will be interesting to see if any all-time records from that winter are broken. If you hear about some place breaking an all-time record and that was in 1969 or some other more recent year, it probably didn't have records from 1950. Vancouver airport had -18 C that winter, so far I think the lowest there is around -11 C in this cold spell. Date records are falling all over the province but it seems like some of the more severe historical cold spells were on other dates so this is filling in some gaps. 

Pro tip for these temperatures, keep your vehicle gas tank close to full and have de-icer available if you get any gas line freeze problems. 

Indeed! Its amazing how mother Nature turns around so quickly and flips from one side of the coin to another....But very interesting. ...Enjoy, it will be our turn soon...

[carinthian]

Another sliding low off the North Pacific hit the Arctic over flow and dumped more snow in Vancouver last night. Pictures taken from my sons hood in Vancouver a fews hours ago.

C

[Roger J Smith]

Just watching the news and that snowfall in Vancouver was measured at 15-20 cm all over the region, causing lots of traffic problems as Vancouver snow clearance is maybe 25% of what it would be in any other Canadian city (other than Victoria where they just offer human sacrifices until it goes away). You may think snow is really unusual in that area but from my experience living there for 25 winters heavy snow falls at least once in most winters and sometimes for spells of 2-3 weeks (in 2008-09 we had a long spell of deep snow around New Years and in Dec 1996 there was a huge snowstorm). Only about five of those winters were essentially snow-free and most of those were around the middle of the oughts decade if that is what we call 2004-08. 1997-98 was remarkably mild and we were out playing golf in February, similar in 2014-15 during the polar vortex outbreak in eastern North America. But that's more unusual than snow. Even for Seattle snow is not that unusual, I think the annual average there is around 7 or 8 inches which is paltry compared to 40 at Chicago or 100 at Buffalo NY but even so, few places in the UK outside of Scotland or higher ground in the south have that sort of average. The Vancouver average is probably in the 20-30 range across the urban area. (that would be 50-75 cm). But it comes and goes. That snowstorm in Dec 1996 was all melted away by Jan 7th after another snowstorm turned to heavy rain. 

The next two days look interesting with another snowstorm due in followed by a second mixed event turning to rain on the coast. The cold will reload for a while after that one (all snow inland anyway) then perhaps a pattern change around the 10th of January allowing the Pacific air back in and shunting this severe cold into the central and eastern regions of the U.S. (it already extends well into eastern Canada now except near the border). We could go from deep freeze to balmy chinook type weather but it will probably then oscillate back and forth as it sometimes does in this climate. The snow doesn't really melt in the chinook, it evaporates away, with little runoff. Around here we don't get a chinook effect as the local mountain range (the Monashee range) is not that much higher than the valleys, and any mild air tends to blow up the Columbia valley from the south, rather than across from the west, same in the Okanagan valley, no real chinook phenomenon is noted there either. The east Kootenay  valley (Cranbrook to Invermere and Golden) can get a slight chinook effect but often when it's raging in Alberta the colder air stays trapped in the east Kootenay in calm conditions, and it just warms from the top down until it's tepid (3-5 C) but not as mild as Alberta would get (often 12-17 C). In the winter of 1954 they had temperatures into the 20s in southern Alberta from exceptional strong chinook warming. The warmest we would ever see here in January would be around 7-8 C. Vancouver has maximum records similar to most places in the UK and Ireland, 13-16 C range most days and always over 10 C for daily records. 

Bottom line is, there is no normal winter weather on the west coast, there are probably three phases, mild/wet, foggy/cold inversion, and bitter cold with occasional snow, and the weather moves from phase to phase for what seem like random spells of time. The foggy inversion weather is fairly uncommon but can settle in for a week or two, then you have a chilly near freezing gloom over most of the city but warm sunshine up on the north shore mountains and sometimes out in the valley, with temperatures considerably higher than in the fog. 

[SLEETY]

Home golf simulators must be popular in Canada in the winter months,with outside  sub-zero for months,anyone got one thats posts from Cananda

[Coopsy]

6 hours ago, SLEETY said:

Home golf simulators must be popular in Canada in the winter months,with outside  sub-zero for months,anyone got one thats posts from Cananda

You’d think so but people tend to embrace the seasons and the sports it brings. Ie skiing, hockey, ice fishing etc in winter. Though the golf season can certainly be short (may-oct) in the mountains. 

[Coopsy]

Strong chinook winds yesterday made for a sudden warming from minus 20’s to above freezing. Back to cold today though and minus 20’s - hope @CatchMyDrift you managed to enjoy the brief warm up 

[Roger J Smith]

Down here in ski country we have had a heavy snowfall of almost 50 cms in the past two days, and it warmed up to around -2 C yesterday, back down a few degrees today near -8 C. Snow continues to come down at a rate of about 1 cm every 2-3 hours. Snow clearance in this town is like a military operation, they put up warning signs that they are coming the day before, then everything goes including the snow between the road and the sidewalk which is known in these parts as the boulevard. Woe to anyone who parks on the street and neglects to move their vehicle, as they tow those out of their way. At the rate it snows around here, these operations take place about once every week to two weeks. Of course they plow the streets as best they can between these events, but with a lot of street parking that tends to create a rather narrow driving lane and makes it tough to get one's vehicle in and out of parking spaces. It was partly this hassle that turned me from vehicle owner to renter a couple of years ago, once the old jalopy was nearing its point of no return.

This location can have 2 or even 3 metre snow depths at times, we have not reached even 1 metre yet but as almost all precip in Jan and Feb is snow, it won't take long to get into that range if we stay in a similar weather pattern, lots of cold air keeping the storm track mainly to our south. I prefer this to the mixing slushy conditions that we sometimes had in the past two winters. Nothing worse than a heavy cold rain on top of a big snow pack. 

[Roger J Smith]

Well yes we have a golf simulator for this time of year, we call it Arizona. 

So another massive dump of snow on the way here, with the coast getting 20-40 cm later today, then it's our turn Friday and this will turn into a blizzard over southern Alberta and Saskatchewan Friday night and Saturday morning, followed by one last shot of cold air, then a sudden and quite spectacular warming to 10-15 C in a strong chinook by Monday-Tuesday. Ain't life grand? 

For Calgary I would say 8-15 cm from the blizzard, Lethbridge could see 20-35 cm. It will just graze Red Deer and probably miss Edmonton. 

Currently -50.8 C at Watson Lake, southeast Yukon. That is not often seen there, -45 C would be fairly typical under a strong high (which they are). A bit of that air mass is coming south behind the bliz then apparently that's it for winter for a while. The warmup will be crazy fast. 

[matty40s]

Bit icy in New Hampshire yesterday..

 

[matty40s]

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by matty40s

[matty40s]