At the end of the week, the packed mountains of snow should melt into a flowing river, but it might be a good idea to keep the snow shovel handy.
Temperatures are below the seasonal average to start off the week, as we will be hovering around the zero-degree mark for the next couple of days, but Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Justin Shelley says it will get warmer by the weekend.
“We are certainly moving into a pattern this week where we'll be primarily under the influence of an upper Ridge, which is bringing in this warmer air mass for the end of the week and to start off the weekend normal daytime highs around this time of year.”
Shelley adds that it might be too soon to close the book for winter.
“We are tracking a system later in the weekend that could potentially bring some snowfall to portions of the province. There's a large degree of uncertainty.”
There wasn’t too much snowfall last April, but Shelley notes that there on average, there’s usually 7-8 cms of snow.
He also pointed out that in April of 2023, there was a significant system in the middle of the month that produced two feet of snow around the Weyburn and Qu’Appelle area.
Shelley says with the weather history in April, there’s always a possibility snowfall we can reappear.
“Climatologically speaking, we're not out of the woods, but for the short term, we can enjoy the warmer weather.”
The up and down nature of temperatures was prevalent throughout winter, with warm temperatures replaced with frigid cold temperatures in a short amount of time. Even though we shouldn’t see extreme cold weather in April, the inconsistent weather could continue as Shelley explains.
“These types of air masses that can move in pretty quickly and move out just as quick, you know, some of the, again there's a bit of uncertainty with this and we're getting into the week two period here, but some of the models are indicating that those cooler temperatures could persist into the middle of next week”
He adds, “We do see this pretty frequently, we come in with warm temperatures and on the backside of that warm air mass, we get slammed with this colder, the colder air and that potential snowfall.”