Alberta Foothills Weather

March roared in at 6:14 am this morning with a blast of wind from the north as a “cold” front passed through. Not much cold to it, there was no effect on temperatures, we got about eight specks of snow then the sun came out and it turned out to be a nice day here, getting up to 10C again. Since the last post it has been nothing but springlike, highs around +10, sunny, melty. As a bonus, the first puffies of the year brewed up to the south this afternoon. Nice to see cauliflower sprouting this early.

Is winter over for us dwellers of the Rocky Mountain rainshadow? Again we have one juicy system after another pushing in from northern BC, track just to the north of us and give nothing but wind. All the folks up north and east of Edmonton that have piles of snow already, will get all of the goodies coming through in the next few days. Kazilliions of tons of moisture pouring across the rockies and EC’s 144 hour precip forecast has us lined up for less than 5mm of it. Lots of wind though. Bleh.
No serious encounters with siberian cold are showing on long range models out to the 10th, which leaves 11 days for winter to make a run before Spring has sprung.

Putting together the February 2008-2007 comparison, it was interesting to see how warm the second half of the month was last year, almost as warm as this year. March of 07 was beautiful, 16.5C by the 3rd and mostly well above 10C until we went from a high of 22C on March 30 to -1.5 on April 1.