Old man Winter isn’t ready to take his annual nap just yet, as a Special Weather Statement issued by Environment and Climate Change Canada is calling for more snow.
The statement says a spring storm is set to bring a mix of rain and heavy snow to portions of southern Saskatchewan on Tuesday night into Thursday this week.
Rose Carlson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, gives us more information about the storm.
“We are going to be expecting mixed precipitation storm that is going to be moving into the southern Saskatchewan area as rain primarily on Tuesday before transitioning over too heavy snow on Wednesday morning.”
As for how much snow, the statement predicts 10 to 20 cm, but Carlsson notes it is hard to predict.
“As a result of the condition of the existing temperatures and the evolution of the system itself, there is a lot of uncertainties with snowfall accumulation, when the rain will end of switching over to snow, and to a lesser extent, uncertainly as to where the heaviest precipitation will be falling, but we are expecting to the southeast corner of Saskatchewan to be pretty heavily affected.”
The statement notes that the highest confidence for the heaviest precipitation lies over eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba, roughly from Regina to the Manitoba Parklands. The greatest uncertainty lies over western Saskatchewan, west of Regina, and the eastern Red River Valley.
Carlson adds that the storm is expected to last for most of the week, but after it clears up, we should see a return to average temperatures and weather.
“With these light springtime storms, they can be quite jarring because it can be a significant weather change,” she said. “However, we are quickly going to be moving back into normal temperatures after the system moves through, and any snow that does fall, we are going to be expecting a lot of it not to stick around too long.”
Carlsson does note that the snow and rain has the potential to have quite an impact on the areas hit.
Carlsson adds that they will continue to monitor and update the storm at weather.gc.ca for updated local forecasts and any watches and warnings that are issued over the coming days.
