Mild today in Calgary, forecast gumbo tomorrow

CALGARY -

Mother Nature is a self-driving car with a slight glitch this weekend, but she'll self-correct in a hurry.

Tonight is standard fare for a November evening in our city; a seasonal low of -8 will be marginally exceeded, but then dipped beneath by merit of moderate wind and a steady wind chill.

Tomorrow , we'll find our way to multiple series of gusts from different directions. We start with west wind at times gusting to the 60s, but surface conditions are going to have their say; an arctic high is moving in at the exit region of a high-pressure ridge, wedging beneath that heat and shoving it away under strong northerly wind gusts. We should see an early afternoon high between 4 C and 6 C, with a mid-afternoon temperature of negative 4 C to 6 C. The overnight dive will hit the negative double digits, and offers a rather small chance for flurries to band in.

But, as that introductory analogy states, we’ll self-correct in a hurry. The ridge of high pressure will carry on, producing warm, dry, stable conditions, and a high of 8 C on Sunday.

A low rolling off the foothills (yes - another clipper!) near Calgary will plant us in the face of some mixed wintry precipitation by Tuesday. Early forecast models keep it largely calm here as it will rapidly move along, and fail to paint a drastic picture for us. Overnight snow showers Tuesday offer 2 cm at this time, which will have fallen by sunrise Wednesday.

YOUR FIVE-DAY FORECAST

Tonight:

• Evening: some cloud, low -4 C

Tomorrow:

• West wind to start – then the arctic air mass arrives. Northerly wind gusts, downtrending temps through the afternoon
• Daytime high: 5 C
• Evening: windy, cloudy, low -11 C

Sunday:

• Mainly sunny, gusts W 30 km/h
• Daytime high: 8 C
• Evening: some cloud, low 1

Monday:

• Partly cloudy
• Daytime high: 9 C
• Evening: some cloud, low -1

Tuesday:

• Mainly cloudy, late snow showers
• Daytime high: 2 C
• Evening: snow showers, low -7

Wednesday:

• Partly cloudy, early snow flurries
• Daytime high: -2 C
• Evening: some cloud, low -6

A massive thank-you to Jim for sending along a 2 a.m. partial lunar eclipse photo overnight!

Viewer Jim captured the partial lunar eclipse early Friday morning.

You can submit your photos here, email me here, or tweet them over!