Alberta Foothills Weather

Another week of completely unexciting weather around here.
Today was the first time we got close to 20C since August 29, making it to 20.4, which is about normal for this time of year. The rest of it has been mostly below 15C, about half and half sun and schmogg.
Amazingly, we have not been below zero [...]

Bye bye summertime.
The day after the last post, a cold front rolled past, and the warmth never came back. Mostly a cool northwesterly flow since, with only a few days reaching for 20C, the rest spent below 15.
Jack frost has been dancing around the past few mornings, but we have been covering up and nothing [...]

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, [...]