EDMONTON – A colourful map of weather warnings showed freezing rain and wind alerts for our province. Environment Canada issued the weather warnings early Friday morning.
Dan Kulak, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada explained “warm Pacific air is streaming across the Rockies today but the lack of cold is also bringing some other forms of severe weather to Alberta.”
In central Alberta, warm air very high in the atmosphere (but cool surface temperatures in the morning hours) resulted in conditions ripe for freezing rain; the weather phenomenon where rain falls and freezes to the ground on contact.
Snowfall will follow for the mountain park regions and far northern areas late Friday into Saturday, though warnings are not expected to be issued.
Then, there is the wind.
Strong winds have prompted wind warnings in the southwest.
“Across the far southwest part of Alberta, the warm air coming across the Rockies has already surfaced or will soon surface as westerly Chinook winds gusting in some areas to 80 km/h,” Kulak explained.
“Chinook winds are expected to strengthen to gusts near 100 km/h this afternoon and persist until Saturday morning” in the severe-warned areas, Kulak said.
Those Chinook winds will result in warming temperatures through Friday evening. Daytime highs in the mid-to-high single digits are forecast to occur in the supper-time hours.