Alberta Foothills Weather

17mm of rain Thursday was followed by another ridge of high pressure and heat above that cleared things out for a nice weekend around these parts. This afternoon a lee trough formed up over the foothills, creating a wave cloud that parked overhead till after dark, but gave a nice display of mammatus at sunset.

Where’s the fire?
We headed out west around 6 to check out a persistent cell that had been boiling away just south of Rocky for most of the afternoon. Not much could be seen through a thickening haze of smoke, we thought perhaps this storm had lit off a new fire out west, but it seems [...]

A big ridge of high pressure and toasty warm temperatures in the upper levels have been squashing any chance of convective goodies and building up the heat around here since the last post. A few small but electrically active storms rumbled around to the north and south us last night, a few more fired up [...]

Servere thunderstorm watches went up today before noon from Waterton park to Ponoka, and around 6pm this thing rolled out of the foothills. Nothing but some wind and a bit of rain, a few hail bits but not enough to mix a drink.

There was plenty of ice laying around Red Deer after the nasty hail [...]

Shortly after Environment Canada updated their forecast for the evening from “chance of thunderstorms” to “clear”, some serious action began in the mountains west of Sundre and slowly moved out to the east.
The first big cell died down just north of Sundre, but cleared the way for the next batch coming across.
Electrical mayhem ensued for [...]

Twice in a week!
After a roasty hot and cloudless day today, one had to wonder if something like this was in store.
Around 11pm, a few highly electric cells began to fire up out of the black, these shots are of one over Red Deer.

A nice surprise at 1:30 this morning as this little batch of sparks passed by to the north.

Nothing interesting weather-wise to report around here since the last post, a bit on the cool side, but generally comfortable and dry.
While out in a nearby canola patch this afternoon shooting some photos with a photog from the Red Deer Advocate, one of our neighbors from the Pine Hill colony stopped by for a chat, [...]

Been very busy with non weather related stuff since the last post, so it was nice of Ma nature to hold off on the nasty weather over the past week while that was going on.
Yesterday we were parked out south of Caroline early in the afternoon watching storms wind up in the foothills and slowly [...]

Headed west again today to meet some nice cells firing up in the foothills. I was parked just east of hwy#22 south of Caroline watching a nice storm get going when Brandon pulled up, so we sat and watched it churn over the same spot for an hour before merging with another cell developing to [...]