Cold snap in Calgary to help snow stick around
Posted Nov 16, 2013 8:11 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It should be no surprise, there’s another snow fall warning in effect for the city, but don’t call it “Snowmageddon” just yet.
However, this snowfall is expected to be a little different than what we’ve previously seen so far this season.
In addition to 10 centimetres of snow that’s expected to fall Saturday in Calgary before the storm tapers off in the evening, a strong north wind, and a drastic drop in temperature is going to make the snow stick around a little longer this time.
The epicentre of this snow storm is in Red Deer, where with strong winds and heavy snow fall, visibility is reported to be a kilometre or less at times.
The storm is moving south and Eric Degroot from Environment Canada says Calgary will get hit hardest a little later Saturday morning.
“It’s not a horrible storm, surely we’ve seen worse, but at the same time, with the winds that are going to accompany this, on all the highways we’re going to see a lot of blowing and drifting snow. In Red Deer and Drumheller, we expect to see some stronger winds, a little bit more intense with the snowfall, so we expect to see some blowing snow and visibilities there will probably be down below a kilometre for much of the day, so that’ll make the drive a little more interesting and a lot more dangerous,” says Degroot.
In Calgary, the temperature will fall Saturday afternoon to minus 11 with wind gusting upwards of 60 kilometres per hour.
However, sunshine is in the forecast Sunday with a high of -6, which will provide some relief from the snow Saturday.
Outside of Calgary, more than 10-15 centimetres could accumulate, with the snowfall warning in place in large areas of central and southern Alberta.
Carissa Vescio from City Roads, says all available crews have been deployed.
“Roads have been working overnight and into the morning to concentrate on the priority one routes, which are the routes that carry more than 20,000 vehicles per day. Overnight we were doing a mixture of sand and salt, which we call a pickle, and today, because it was warmer this morning, we were concentrating on using salt,” says Vescio.
Crews will continue to monitor the road conditions and plow all priority roads first.
