After days of talking about it, it appears the Colorado Low will move into southern Manitoba later this evening.
Danielle Desjardins is a meteorologist with Environment Canada. She says the wet and heavy snow will track from south to north, impacting portions of southern Manitoba late this evening and into the overnight periods. About five centimetres of snow is expected before morning.
"We are expecting that the morning commute will be quite slow because there will be ongoing falling snow tomorrow morning," she explains.
Desjardins says one of the good things with this Colorado Low is that there is not a lot of wind associated with it, at least not right off the bat. As a result, she says the heavy snow will be the main concern, not blowing snow.
It is anticipated that this system will linger over the southern half of the province until Friday. The end result could be between 20 and 30 centimetres of snow for most of southern Manitoba. Areas closer to the international border and parts of western Manitoba including Parklands will likely see the highest totals.
But, even with that amount of snow, Desjardins says it is quite possible that no snowfall warnings will be associated with this system. That is because no single day is expected to see enough snow to warrant a warning. Rather, it will be the accumulative effect of day after day of snow that will eventually bring us those higher overall totals.
Desjardins says a Colorado Low lasting this long is unusual.
"Usually, Colorado lows track quite quickly through the province," she explains. "But we just have this system that's going to be lingering, tracking from the United States up into Ontario, so we are kind of seeing the remnants of this system not moving through the province quite as quickly as some of these systems."
In fact, she says southern Manitoba is escaping the brunt of this system, noting Minnesota and the Dakotas will be hit much harder.
Though winds are not expected to be a factor for the next couple of days, Desjardins says winds will pick up as the system starts to pull out, suggesting Thursday night and into Friday morning could see the strongest winds. Those winds will then usher in much colder weather, with highs near -20 degrees for Sunday and Monday.