CALGARY -- As I said last week: "Short articles are boring articles; boring articles leave little room for surprises."

With a quieter weather week in mind, let's wrap in some more science! After the forecast, I'll chat about a woman who was not only a renowned paleontologist, but also coined of one of the English language’s most famous tongue-twisters.

Our upper-air pattern is meridional right now – that means we're in the ebbs and flows of highs and lows, without any major governing pattern this week. While that usually leaves room for surprises, it also heralds a general lack of strength for moisture off the Pacific to make it very far across the Rockies. I looked into conditions in Banff and see only scant flurries in the three-day forecast. There are no major setups with the oomph to get far off the foothills in the five-day.

Our forecast high today should break even at the freezing margin, with wind out of the northwest keeping us honest. This will also push in some high cloud for the afternoon, keeping us shadier there.

We'll enjoy some westerly components over the next few days, and should expect those moments to last a few hours at a time – they'll translate to positive highs, for those of you who still have weathering and Christmas decorating to do outdoors.

Here's the five-day forecast:

Today:

  • Partly cloudy
  • Daytime high: 0 C
  • Evening: clear, low -9 C

Tomorrow:

  • Mainly sunny
  • Daytime high: 4 C
  • Evening: partial cloud, low -3 C

Wednesday:

  • Partly cloudy
  • Daytime high: 1 C
  • Evening: clear, low -7 C

Thursday:

  • Mainly sunny
  • Daytime high: 3 C
  • Evening: clear, low 2 C

Friday:

  • Mainly sunny
  • Daytime high: 6 C
  • Evening: clear, low -2 C

Science time! Mary Anning was a world premiere fossilist. She was born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, a community on Britain's southern shore known for its coastal cliffs. Anning's family were prolific fossil-hunters in the beds of these cliffs and made their living from doing so, though Mary was head-and-shoulders the best. She is credited with the discovery of the first plesiosaur. Her contributions to paleontology went largely overlooked and her findings went uncredited, due to her social status and gender, but no one can take away the famous tongue-twister coined for her: She sells sea shells by the sea shore. You can read more about Mary Anning here.

plesiosaur, wikimedia commons

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Do you have a branch of science you want to learn more about? Reach out to me here and let me know!

Let's jump into our active weather photos, from Dave and David!

Dave was at Lake Louise when he snapped this one:

Lake Louise, ski resort, Dave, Nov. 22

David was driving by Canmore and paused for a moment at Gap Lake to show off another group of people enjoying the winter weather.

Gap Lake, skating, Canmore, Nov. 22, David

You can submit your weather photos here.