Alberta Foothills Weather

March 10 – Only fog

Pat Boomer — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:09:53 +0000

Not a flake to be seen around here from our Monday/Tuesday system, but we did get a nice rime show this morning to make up for it. Stuck from the west side again, it didn’t stand a chance against the power of March 10 sunlight even at -10C this morning, and was all gone well before it could be fully lit for photos. Today makes for 29 frost photo days so far this season, with nearly that many days where either the light was too poor, it was still too foggy, or just not something worth shooting.

That was possibly our last run at some snow this winter, but the cold might not be done with just yet. The long range is showing an enemy high setting up off the BC coast in a week, which would help to feed whatever Siberian air lurks in the Arctic down this way. Hopefully it will evaporate and the warm westerly flow can continue.

March 7 – Badlands tour

Pat Boomer — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:04:05 +0000

Another fantastic week in the books. Nice and warm, dry and benign. Another 5 of 7 foggy mornings this week with varying degrees of frost, but nothing epic. The snow here has taken a big hit over the week, and although we still have cover here, it’s getting thin.
We decided to go for a roll south somewhere this morning to see what we could see, and wound up around Drumheller toodling around the hoodoos in +14C temps under steel blue skies. Not much snow south of Innisfail or east of the QE2 other than leftover drifts and no complete cover south of here.
This was supposed to change over the next few days, with threats of a cold shot and snow somewhere around here starting tomorrow night. I’m not expecting to see much here other than some wind, but a foot would be nice! Depending on which model you look at, we could get 15cm or bupkis. Hopefully the foothills will get some fresh stuff and stretch out the sled season a bit.
If we do get any fluff it won’t last long as we are set to return to melting temperatures by Wednesday.
Still nothing apocalyptic showing on the long range, but we will need to pay for this nice winter at some point. As long as it’s not in August!

February 28 – Snow Moon

Pat Boomer — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:29:31 +0000

Another month of winter flies past without much to remember but the fog. March is set to stroll in like a lamb, with temperatures reaching for 10C this coming week and no moisture to be seen.
The snow is slowly fading away here, still enough left to get out for a few laps on the sleds over the weekend, but things will likely look a lot less white by the end of the week. With less than 3 weeks of official winter left, it looks like its over. No arctic intrusions showing out to day 10, yet, and no precip either.

More fog than not again this week, and a real nice rime show this morning, stuck on from the west side this time, hardly lasting long enough for the sun to get past high noon and light it up before it all went away. The fog/smog inversion layer stuck around all day then thickened up at sunset, which made for an interesting Snow moonrise this eve. Deep red as it came over the horizon and distorted by the inversion, the moon shifted to bright orange before hiding behind the clouds. Bright enough to read a book out there tonight!

February 21 – A month to go

Pat Boomer — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:14:24 +0000

This winter is flying past without any real winter since it started, and none on the horizon. Time flies when you are having fun I guess, there seemed to be very little separation between last weekend and this one.

A few mentionables since the previous post:
Howling wind for the best part of last weekend wrecked the fun of standing around at Sylvan’s winterfest, another missed fireworks show thanks to the blow. The worst part of the weekend came Sunday night when we finally got a look at the carnage in the driveway. Finely polished snow grains the size of flour left a good 70 foot stretch of 3 foot deep cement. Good thing Monday was a holiday cause that was a multi hour digout before we could get to the road. Got up early Monday to get after the dig and were thrilled to see another 8cm or so of new white stuff on top.

Our amazing foggy winter continues. More nights than not, there has been fog to some extent around here, the last two nights have been very thick but last night was as thick as it has ever been. 90+% humidity, -18C and a 10kmh breeze left everything facing southeast slathered with soft rime. A beautiful clear and calm morning had us up and out soaking it up early, by noon most of it was gone. Probably the nicest display we’ve had since Xmas.

Today was certainly a keeper, blue skies and just below zero, it was a perfect setup for the ice races on Sylvan Lake. Lots of people out enjoying the day, watching the all sorts of different rigs fly around that track at speeds that should be impossible on ice.
Feeling a touch of the need for speed after watching the races, we even managed to get out for a rip on the sleds when we got back, really quite excellent conditions out in the field right now, the big blow last weekend seemed to level things out, and the new snow after put a perfect cushion on top. Another 10cm and we are at perfection.
So where the heck is it.
I am not trusting anything the forecast models say past 12 hours this week, I’m going to watch out the window instead.

February 12 – M8 solar flare

Pat Boomer — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:34:37 +0000

The biggest flare since June 12, 2007 blasted out of AR1046 this morning, unleashing a large CME that looks to be on it’s way to us. A smaller C8 flare a few hours before also spewed a CME in our general direction, but that may have been cannibalized by the large one behind it. Somewhere around Monday we should see just how earth directed this shot was.

The forecast is still calling for some snow Monday, I’m hoping things will clear out late in the day, won’t want to miss this light show if it happens.

A new feature has been added to the blog that allows registered visitors to add images to their comments. It seems to work pretty slick so we’ll see how it goes. Let’s see what it looks like from your angle!
Fireworks in Sylvan Lake Saturday night @ 8pm for Winterfest.

February 10 – Easy winter

Pat Boomer — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:02:02 +0000

After a few more foggy days, we have finally been rescued from the gloom by the return of the warm westerly flow. The clearoff started Tuesday morning, giving yet another eye watering show of whiteness. Beautiful blue skies and just below zero for the past two days, back to nice.
With the westerly flow continuing for the week, according to the GFS model, and our average high temperature heading ever closer to the zero mark, real winter cold will have to make a serious effort to settle back in here this season. Another batch of cold sinks into Saskatchewan Saturday, very similar to the one that went through there last weekend that gave us the wind and fog, just a few miles further east. Hoping the west wins, the wind stays east, and we don’t get a repeat. A ridge is forecast to form up over the BC coast next week, will have to watch that, I’m hoping it will be gone in a run or two so the warm flow can continue, the Olympics folks in Vancouver must be praying for it to happen.
Some snow would be nice here too. The only new white stuff on the ground in what seems like months is the frost that has fallen off the trees.
We may get a few flakes for Sylvan Lake’s Winterfest on Saturday, and at the moment there is a hint of a nice little shot on Monday, but still no sign of the 70cm dump I am longing for. Probably just more fog.

February 5 – It’s foggin’ crazy around here

Pat Boomer — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:43:02 +0000

If it wasn’t for the fog, it would be a pretty boring winter.
It’s been quite drab since the last post, a few flakes of snow but not enough to get the shovel out, average temperatures for this time of year, mostly just blah. The train of lows keeps rolling in to the west coast, keeping the cold stuff east and north and us under an inversion for the past 4 days.
The first three days the fog never lifted and we didn’t see the sun until today, after a extra thick shot of fog last night with a southeast breeze. The blanket lifted early this morning, revealing a thick coat of soft rime on everything when the sun came up. We’ve got a few hundred frost shots this year already, but every new show is almost like the first time again, I can’t get enough of it. After almost two hours of walking around in awe, enjoying the nice sunny morning, the wind picked up just as I got home and all of Ma Nature’s lovely handywork was gone in 10 minutes.

Still no new snow on the long range that I can see, got fingers crossed for next weekend but not real confident about that. An interesting little hook shot low makes a run into Saskatchewan from the northeast on Monday, pulling down some colder air that will feed in here briefly before the westerly flow pushes back in.
While a good dump of snow would be nice, for sledding purposes, it’s really hard to complain about this stagnant weather, the nice westerly flow has taken a huge bite out of this winter.
I was hoping to get out to see the ice races in Innisfail this weekend, they had to postpone them last weekend due to lack of ice, but now they have been moved to Gull lake because there still isn’t enough.
Sylvan Lake has their ice races on Feb.21, will have to go check those out instead.

January 22 – Spiketacular

Pat Boomer — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:24:28 +0000

Finally some interesting weather around here. Rime time again.
After basking in April like temperatures since the last post, with wave after warm wave pushing over the Rockies, keeping the cold air well to the north, most of our nice snow has evaporated away.
From roughly the Red Deer river south there is more brown than white, only the hard drifts left over. By the time you get south of Calgary there is no snow left. Going to need a good dumping of white stuff to get out on the sleds around here again, our lovely 30cm cushion has sunk to nothing, and what’s left is hard as concrete.

For the past two days we have been back into the phog. Our caravan of pacific lows has moved south, letting colder air slip in from the north, setting up an inversion over a good part of the province.
This time the breeze came from the east, loading up everything facing that way with spiky hard rime. The sun has been completely buried in the mist, making for less than great photo ops, but that doesn’t seem to matter, more shots have been taken in the past two days than the past two weeks.
Despite a never ending supply of troughs along the foothills, and plenty of watching, there were no real nice waves to see. We went for a quick lennie chase last Sunday from Airdrie west hoping for something but got skunked. Everything was south of High River and there isn’t enough day for long road trips yet. The only wildlife we saw in 400km were a half dozen deer behind the Wal Mart in Airdrie… we arrived home with 3 crummy photos for the day.

Still waiting for something scary to pop up on the forecast models, but nothing doing. There have been a few long range threats of Siberian cold attacking, but they only last a day and are modified out of the loop. The stout flow from the west has been doing a good job of keeping the nasty cold to the north and east, the GFS is showing another monster low crashing the BC coast Sunday, running into a large cold mass moving down from the Yukon and losing, letting the cold in here. Here’s hoping for an extra shove from the west. Saskatchewan can have the cold, I like this warm stuff.
Since January 9, the coldest night has been -10.1C. Today’s high of -5.2C was the coolest day since Jan. 8, with 8 days above zero in there.
I’d really like some snow, but temps like these and dry roads in the heart of winter are pretty nice too.

January 12 – Toasty warm

Pat Boomer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:28:36 +0000

Time flies when it’s nice out! It’s hard to believe its the 12th already, this month is zooming past.

The first week of the year was forgettable, cold and windy, a few dribbles of snow and another New Year fireworks show blown off due to the cold.

Week two has been a complete turnaround.
An endless flow of warm wet bombs have been pouring into the southern BC coast since Thursday, all the moisture has been scraped off in BC leaving only the heat for us.
10C and above for a lot of southern Alberta from Calgary down, hovering around +2 to +4 here.
The snow has taken a big hit over the past 4 days, dropping by 50% around here where it’s white, by the end of the week it will likely be unsleddable in the fields.

There isn’t much snow left out in the field around here anyway, we chewed it up pretty good over the weekend, getting out in the springlike weather as much as possible. Today’s high of +5 had me out walking around with the hounds for most of the afternoon. Hard to complain about weather like this, other than the loss of sled time, it’s going to take a good dump to get them out of the garage again but that is nowhere in sight. Winter in general is still nowhere in sight, no cold, no snow on the menu for the next 10 days.
If it keeps up, January might turn out to be a nicer month than October was.

December 28 – Foggy days

Pat Boomer — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:45:38 +0000

Stuck in a temperature inversion, the fog hasn’t really lifted since the last post. Quite warm a few hundred feet up but staying below -10 at the surface, a little bit of mixing and a whiff of wind has given us two more amazing rime shows around here. The softest of rime, it looks like goose feathers and leaps off the trees with the slightest breath of wind, only to be replaced the next night.
Today was the foggiest, from midnight to noon visibility was reduced to no more than a few hundred feet, lifting a bit late this afternoon before socking in again before dark.
Not very nice driving in it, but it sure does lovely things to the landscape.