It’s been one of the nicest falls, weather-wise, in years, but all good things come to an end.
That’s according to weather-watcher Rob Palola, a retired Environment Canada meteorologist, who told 680 CJOB that Manitoba might have experienced out-of-the-ordinary heat this month — although not quite breaking any records — but rain and cooler temperatures are in the forecast.
“We had a glorious start to the week, but unfortunately for Thanksgiving weekend plans, things will be getting cooler and wetter.”
Paola said the forecast shows some showers and even scattered thunderstorms over the next couple of days, with likely widespread rain — with some regions looking at 20 to 30 millimetres of moisture — throughout the Red River Valley and southeastern Manitoba.
“It’s not the best timing for Thanksgiving plans, but we certainly can use that moisture to recharge soil moisture levels,” he said.
“The cooler air is still over Western Canada and is going to remain there, while our warmth that we’ve been experiencing is going to be shifting over Ontario and Eastern Canada for next week.
“That’s going to set up basically a boundary across the prairies next week and we could see more stormy weather and wet weather.”
The good news: an above-average October, like we’ve experienced so far, doesn’t necessarily mean a colder winter. As Paola said, there’s not really any connection between the seasonal temperatures.
“We’ve had similar warm beginnings to October, and some winters (following) those early October heat waves have resulted in a very cold winter — but some were very mild, and some were average … so you don’t really see a correlation between warm weather in October to the following winter.”
Warm fall could pose problems
These warm and dry conditions come after a summer drought that hurt farmers along with perfect conditions for wildfires. It’s a cause for concern among some climate experts, who say projections are showing more seasons like this are coming.
“The climate projections are telling us, if we continue to dump carbon into the atmosphere, we’re headed for summers that are hotter than they have been and we’ll have more of those 30 plus days in the future,” said Climate Change Connection Project Director Curt Hull.
And there are short-term environmental implications as well, according to Barret Miller of FortWhyte Alive.
“Soil moisture is important for new growth in the springtime,” Miller said. “If that’s not there. that could leave us really dry. This spring was dry, next spring could be really dry.”
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