More frost advisories possible in central Alberta tonight

AFTERNOON UPDATE: If you read the morning outlook daily, you'll go through this paragraph and think I'm phoning it in. At least, that's how it feels for me, too.

We have an added touch of cloud right now but otherwise our forecast for the day is rock-steady. Central Alberta may indeed crest close to the freezing mark; a few spots dropped into the frost margins this morning, including Nordegg, Priddis, Banff, and Waterton. Calgary had a site report in at 1.4 C for the low marker.

Watch for those frost advisories within the next couple of hours — likely by 4 p.m.

Temperature-wise, the next few days are holding firm near 20 C; there's a longer-range chance of showers, but as our forecast models have already let us down more than once this spring, I'll reserve judgement on that.

MORNING OUTLOOK: Frost advisories in our province ended early Tuesday morning and I don't expect them to return to southern Alberta, though central Alberta may see a couple repopulate once again.

We set in to high pressure and this weak blocking pattern for the next few days. Yesterday, the descriptor was banal. Today, I'm going with benign.

The blocking pattern in question is the result of a pair of flanking lows aloft; neither will concede ground for a while. It's known as an Omega Block, where a high centres between two low pressure regions in the tips of the Omega symbol:

This version is a little rough around the edges when compared to a more classic setup, but it's close. That's the Thursday outlook in the image above. It started yesterday evening, in fairness; the northern wind yesterday was the fault of the eastern low, piling over Manitoba, which has that strong northerly influence on its west flank and cleared our cloud away. The second low is out over the Pacific. I popped this projection further ahead and confirmed that we'll still have this pair of lows present come the weekend, though the high pressure down the middle will fade. This won't change much; we'll just get a little extra cloud on top of being sandwiched in these lows.

To repeat: Extra cloud; not rain. The growing season conditions will worsen before they improve.

YOUR FIVE-DAY CALGARY FORECAST:

Tuesday

• Evening: mainly clear, low 6 C

Wednesday

• Partly cloudy
• Daytime high: 18 C
• Evening: some cloud, low 7 C

Thursday

• Sunny
• Daytime high: 21 C
• Evening: clear, low 8 C

Friday

• Sunny
• Daytime high: 22 C
• Evening: building cloud, low 11 C

Saturday

• Partly cloudy
• Daytime high: 22 C
• Evening: partly cloudy, low 10 C

Sunday

• Mainly cloudy
• Daytime high: 19 C
• Evening: partly cloudy, low 11 C

Today's pic is from Rich, who appreciated the cloud formations around midday:

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