CALGARY -- Welcome to the start of Meteorological Winter! The meteorological seasons follow the Julian Calendar by month; so December, January, and February make our winter, March, April and May make spring, and so on.

The astronomical seasons follow our solstices and equinoxes, so, the sun`s position above earth. The shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, is the 21st, marking when the sun is directly over 23-degrees longitude in the southern hemisphere. For now, we`ll continue losing roughly 2 minutes of daylight per day as we close in on the winter solstice. The Great Conjunction will also occur on the solstice, marking the first time in 20 years that Saturn and Jupiter will be visible together in our night sky! We'll dive into that more as it gets closer.

We will open to significant warmth for the remainder of the work week beyond today. To start, though, off-and-on bluster overnight brought us the temperature drop you'd expect from northern wind. To get beneath the incoming high-pressure ridge, you require a little… "growing pain." That comes today in the form of a high of 2 C.

When you consider our seasonal normal is 0 C right now, today's "cool" marker doesn't seem all that bad. And it isn't!

Wednesday is the most inoffensive day of the week. Not only will we rise well above the norm, we'll do so beneath the high-pressure ridge with benign wind. The pressure-sensitive who suffer during chinook wind can breathe a sigh of relief.

Thursday, unfortunately for that group, may bring us right back to chinook wind. Early indicators point to westerly wind with mild gusts, but those wind forecast models can get a little tripped up even 48 hours out and we could see a gust increase by then. Thursday is a trifecta-day: High pressure (1) brings sunshine (2) with strong westerly wind (3) for a hefty warm-up.

Here's the five-day forecast:

Today:

  • Sunny
  • Daytime high: 2 C
  • Evening: clear, low -2 C

Tomorrow:

  • Sunny
  • Daytime high: 9 C
  • Evening: clear, low 4 C

Thursday:

  • Mainly sunny
  • Daytime high: 12 C
  • Evening: clear, low 3 C

Friday:

  • Mainly sunny
  • Daytime high: 7 C
  • Evening: clear, low 3 C

Saturday:

  • Mainly sunny
  • Daytime high: 10 C
  • Evening: clear, low 0 C

Another evening, another menagerie of beautiful weather photos!

Chris in Cochrane caught the light just right:

Chris, Cochrane, colourful sky, mountain

And Monica took full advantage of that chinook arch!

Chinook arch, Calgary, Monica

You can submit your weather photos here.