Ben's Weather Blog

Hmm… Should there be such a thing as a “Snow wave?”

If you’ve been looking at any sort of forecasts lately, you would probably know it’s going to be chilly next week. If you’ve been looking at any sort of forecasts lately lately, you would probably know it’s going to be cold next week. If you’ve been looking at any sort of forecasts lately lately lately, you would probably know it’s going to be very cold next week. Yeah, like a high of -9 on Thursday, from Environment Canada.

To start this off, let’s take a look at what is causing the cold.

• A – A Colorado low will create the original cold wave. This would only give us one or two days of near to below average temperatures on its own.
• B – This is the area that will get the cold temperatures form the Colorado low.
• C – Here, there is also a low. This would get us very quickly back to average average temperatures as well.
• D – In this area, just as the Colorado low moves off, a low will suddenly form and strengthen to an extremely strong low in record time. This is likely from perfect conditions that will be prevalent; near the jet stream and low wind shear. This low will also push off the high that’s almost always in a certain spot in the Pacific Ocean. This is a very rare occurrence. It will also stay in one place for a long time.
• E – Here a big ridge will form early to mid next week, but the extremely strong low will keep blocking it from reaching us, eventually fizzling it out entirely, while de-intensifying to low a bit.
• F – This area will stay at cold temperatures long-term. It will likely last until at some point in the last week of the month, but that’ll vary for different areas.

If you were wondering about the actual forecasted temperatures, here they are:

Well, it’s looking cold! Maybe even snow as well. For that, we’ll wait until we closer to any big events, and then I’ll post something for that. Maybe also an update for the cold at some point. For now, we’re done!

November, overall, will probably somewhat similar conditions to October, except slightly weaker heat waves and slightly stronger cold waves. Overall, very slightly above average temperatures.

For the first half, it’s short cold waves and short heat waves, with a pretty dominant heat wave coming up from the 6th to 10th. It looks like very changeable temperatures for the first 5 days, then the heat wave – which’ll probably get us at least one 10 degree day – and then a cooling trend towards the 12th. It does seem that we could see another quick heat wave after that for 1-3 days, but that’s still pretty uncertain.

For the entire first half, everything is very uncertain. I have forecasted that we’ll probably continue the pattern of quick alternating heat and cold waves, but there is a chance at a more extended cold wave. Maybe. Hard to tell. I do see The Weather Network plunging towards -4 for it’s last handful of days on the 14 day forecast, but I also see AccuWeather saying a heat wave right there. I do see AccuWeather’s temperature forecast going pretty far down for the last 7 days of the month, but usually I notice AccuWeather’s weeks of 3-4-5 are not the best and actually considerable worse than something like weeks 6 and 7. So, second half of November: We’ll have to wait and see.

One more thing, What I have noticed is the forecasts don’t seems to take El Niño/La Niña into account, because last winter the highs were overall ending up higher than what the forecasts say, but recently they’ve been lower. This does mean that even though Environment Canada may have been saying 15 degrees for Thursday, it is not unlikely that it’ll end up below 10.

It’s a small heat wave, nothing too record-breaking. In fact, we probably will at most be 5 degrees away from any sort of highest temperature record. Even if it isn’t too big of a heat wave, I can still write about it!

The reason for this heat wave, is, very surprisingly a heat dome. That doesn’t usually happen at this time of year. The thing is, it’s staying far to the south; maybe only brushing Canada’s border a tiny bit. We’re only catching the edge of this system, and if you go all the way down to something like Lethbridge, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all have good chances at 25. Since we’re only getting the topmost affected areas of the blocking high, and it is bordered by cold waves on either side, it’s only going to actually be noticeably “hot” or “very hot” on Monday and Tuesday.

For the actual temperature values, Monday is probably a high of 21, though it could land as low as 19, or as high as 22. (that 19 is very unlikely, by the way) Tuesday is more like a 22, but it could be as low as 20, or as high as 25. If you’ve already packed your summer gear away, or you’re not a fan of the heat, then don’t worry about that 25. It is something like a 5-10% chance of that actually happening; that’s really low.

If you were wondering what is coming after this heat, then wonder no longer. We’re going to be quickly heading right back down to average and maybe even below average. The rest of the week is probably mid-to-low teens for highs, except for Friday, where it’s more like a “close to 10” Oh yes, and really good chances of frost Wednesday and Thursday night.