It was a record-breaking weekend in Grande Prairie with temperatures rising beyond 20 degrees at times.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all had their previous records broken when Friday saw highs of 12.2°C, breaking the 1947 record of 10°C, Saturday saw highs of 15.2°C, five degrees higher than the 10°C record set in 1959, and Sunday experienced highs of 21.3°C, shattering the old record of 9.4°C set in 1976.
Alyssa Pederson, a meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada says El Niño is still hard at work, bringing warm, dry temperatures to the west; however, with such high levels of variation coming this week, she says mother nature is simply looking to balance itself out after the unseasonably warm weekend.
“When we get extreme temperatures and extreme weather patterns that are causing the really high temperatures this weekend, the atmosphere kind of wants to balance itself out,” she says.
According to Pederson, a low-pressure system is expected this week in a natural response to the warm weather, and she says Grande Prairie could be back to its usual late March weather soon.
“It’s going to bring lots of snow, and then behind it, we’re going to get that arctic air coming back into the province.”
For the gardeners, Pederson says it might be best to keep plants indoors for now, as it is not uncommon for the weather to shift dramatically until as late as May.
“For last frost and bringing plants outside I would not recommend doing that even in March or April,” she says. “When we’re talking about the last time we’re going to go below zero, in Alberta, that’s May, we could easily get snow right through into May.”
One topic of discussion that is continuously brought up to ECC is the warm, arid conditions that come along with the El Niño weather phenomenon, but Pederson says warm weather is not the only change to consider when El Niño comes into play.
“What it also does is weakens our jet stream which leads to bigger lobes, bigger variants in that jet stream, essentially more extremes across western Canada.”
Grande Prairie residents can expect temperatures well below zero this week, along with a high chance of snow on Wednesday to bring the region back to the reality of winter.
