Alberta Storm Chasing

Well last week brought a ton of moisture to Alberta. Calgary recieved the snowstorm early last week that dropped 7 cm and most of the province saw some type of precip. Cardston and the Pincher Creek area saw the most with some reports of 75 cm! This was all due to the low pressure system that has been creeping along the Alberta/Montana border for most of the weekend. I saw some convection on Saturday afternoon popping up NE of the city. As I approached the towers were bubbling up into the 10,000 ft range and we a nice surprise. They even dropped some popcorn hail for about 15 mins which you can see here at www.youtube.com/AssiniboineSky .

Looks like the winter weather will push out of the area later tomorrow and then we'll see some heating up for the end of the week, weekend and early next week. Looked at the 14 day Outlook and though it is rarely correct it shows a great warming pattern and above normal temperatures starting in the second week of May. This will be nice too see as thunderstorm season is about to start and the moisture and warm temperatures will sure help.

In other weather news, Canada has now seen its first tornado of the year!! A squall line pushed through Ontario on the weekend causing all sorts of damage and power outages through out Southern Ontario. The first tornado was a very weak EF-0 which touched down in Windsor, ON. The other unofficial tornado was a stronger EF-0 tornado just west of Ottawa were there was considerable damage to trees and homes in the area. There were also wind gusts of 115-130 km/hr wind gust at the Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

The warnings started to pop up early yesterday morning along the Foothills of Alberta and lasted up until the time of this blog entry. Calgary never entered the warning criteria but we sure had our share of wintery weather. Around 1:00 pm the flakes started to fly here in town and they didn't let up until early this morning (April23). After all was done I'd say about 5-7 cm of snow fell here in central Calgary while the real accumulation was in the Foothills to the west. Nordegg to Cardston were the hardest hit and most locations along the Rocky Mountains got anywhere from 10-25 cm of snow.

Also some wind was associated with the cold front as it past through and in the video about you can see some of the gust which were around the 40-45 km/hr range. In the wake of the cold front Alberta is left with some cold temperatures and today's high is only -2 C. That's 15 C lower than the average temperature for this time.

Over the next few days it will warm up but not before some more flurries on Saturday and temperatures in the low-high single digits. Warm air is expected again later this week and is on the rise for the next two weeks. Lets hope that this is the last of the wintery weather and we can finally get the thunderstorm season to start!

Well it looks like winter is coming back once again this week to most parts of the province.Tthe Foothills will be hardest hit again but most of the province will see some type of precipitation. Tomorrow as the low sinks to the south the precip will start as rain here in southern Alberta. That will be a nice as it should wash away some of the dust and dirt on the roads and parking lots in the area and give some much need moisture to the province. But at the same time it could freeze under the snow as the temperature is to dip under 0 C, and that surely will lead to some accidents on the roads here in Calgary. Models have been jumping all over the place with this system but it looks like we will get around 5-10 cm here in town. So far EC is calling for only 2 cm for Calgary but I really think there will be more. Looks as Bragg Creek areas and Rocky Mountain House/Nordegg will see the most snow were 30 cm is possible.

Was hoping that with the cold front pushing in that it would spark some convection but doesn't look like that is gonna happen. So we'll once again have to wait for our first storms of the year. On the plus side we'll see temperatures are 23 C today!!!

Also I have made a some changes to the website. i have taken the thunderstorm forecast off as it is alot of work to maintain and I'm finding that  my forecasting is not to great, which sound make this storm chasing season very interesting!

A low pressure system pulled down the centre of the province today putting a 2-10 cm of snow down across the central parts of Alberta. Most of the snow action was along the central Foothills near Nordegg where 10 cm of the white stuff was recorded. Down here in Calgary we woke up to a white blanket that quickly melted by the time this video was shot. The wind picked up a bit around the time of the filming as this squall pushed through. We are all hoping that this is winter's finally cough and by the looks of it the spring weather will be here to stay after today. We all remember almost exactly a year ago Calgary got an good dump of 10 cm!

This snow was quite the opposite of what the province has been experiencing lately. Edmonton was witness to a few thunderstorms not three days ago and the skies in the south are definetly looking more spring/summerish with tall cumulus rising high in the sky. Don't think there is much chance of storms in the near future but soon enough we'll get the chance!!!

We we did quite hit 20 C today and the thunderstorms just could get going down in the south. They definitely tried hard to getting going though and around noon things looked good. The convection was powering up SW of the city toward Bragg Creek around lunch and watching from our patio I got quite excited. There were no chances of anything severe but the winter has been so long here that any rumble is worth a look.  But as I watched the convection rise it started to get the tops blown off so I knew thing might not pan out. But, I am anxious for the thunderstorm season to start so I headed out west once I saw that the cloud tops weren't getting blow off NW of city.

I chose to head to Cochrane, AB were I could see stronger, untouched convection was occuring. The close I got though the worse it looked. First thing I saw  was super high bases and lots of virga which was the second and thrid signs things weren't looking good. So I watched the cell in the picture above and it started to change a bit. The cloud tops were push higher and looked stronger then most others in the area and the virga looked to be getting closer to the ground. So I repositioned myself farther west to see if I could get some pictures of any lightning the storm might release. When I got closer you could see the storm started to fluster but it did drop some rain and tried to drop some hail.

All in all it was a fun day out in the country if anything. On the way back I did see some more convection firing up SE of Calgary and it grow very quickly. When I got home to check the radar that storm was during some good rain but was very small and pretty much rained itself out.  Tomorrow seems like there is another chance, if not better chance SE of the city but I will be unable to chase tomorrow so hopefully (for my sake) nothing happens!