Storm risk for Calgary Wednesday afternoon/evening
AFTERNOON UPDATE: For their part, showers have subsided. What we're left with is trace potential through the mid-afternoon, and a very small chance of showers later this evening. If it's anything, it won't be a heck of a lot. Tomorrow still holds to thundershower potential, with a rather small amount of attached rainfall; these will be pocket storms rolling free of the foothills.
MORNING EDITION: An extremely eventful day yesterday. Let’s start here:
Among a number of funnel clouds, a short-lived, extremely isolated tornado looks to have done some damage. I imagine there's a decent chance that an official agency heads out that way sometime today to investigate this. Until then, there won't be an official update on whether this was a tornado or not.
We had loads of energy yesterday for storms, but we lacked strong wind shear — the vertical force that enhances storm strength. When there's a lot of energy and limited uplift, you achieve two major factors: one, the huge cumulus towers that make up these storms can sometimes lower a brief vortex below the cloud ceiling; AKA, a funnel cloud. Some of these can even touch down. The second effect is hail; hail requires a strong updraft within the storm to grow large, and without it, abundant pea-sized hail is likely. That's what we saw through parts of our city yesterday, resulting in this:
It's a protective instinct to take shelter in a hailstorm, but it's exponentially more dangerous in low visibility to stop on the road in these circumstances. Luckily, this didn’t result in any collisions.
This brings us to the present; Sunday, we had 10.9 millimetres of rain. That was the wettest day of the year. Yesterday, we topped it; 24.2 mm. Overnight, the rain kept going. Here's the last 24 hours:
I circled Calgary. Sustained showers to the northwest yesterday afternoon and overnight resulted in over 60 mm coming down. This likely wraps just after the noon hour.
Tomorrow, a brief resurgence of moisture may result in thundershowers. Then, the jet stream tilts a wee bit further to the south, giving us a southwesterly profile, and a much warmer – and drier – lead-up heading into the weekend.
I mentioned in our seven-day trend yesterday that a drop was coming for Sunday, leading into more rain; that's now begun to materialize on Saturday afternoon. There's still a chance it falls back; it's a ways off, yet.
YOUR FIVE-DAY CALGARY FORECAST
Tuesday
- Evening: some cloud, low 7 C
Wednesday
- Partly cloudy, chance of afternoon thundershowers
- Daytime high: 21 C
- Evening: clear, low 7 C
Thursday
- Mainly sunny
- Daytime high: 23 C
- Evening: mainly cloudy, low 13 C
Friday
- Partly cloudy
- Daytime high: 23 C
- Evening: mainly cloudy, low 13 C
Saturday
- Partly cloudy, chance of afternoon showers
- Daytime high: 19 C
- Evening: cloudy, chance of showers low 11 C
Sunday
- Mainly cloudy, showers
- Daytime high: 17 C
- Evening: cloudy, chance of showers low 11 C
Today's pic was sent by Vince. The initial frontal boundary for yesterday's activity was a stationary front, where the warm and cold air masses hung together; that creates quite the cloud display!
Submit your weather photos here to see them featured in our article, and perhaps even as the pic of the day during our News at Six! You can also share my way on Twitter, or to our Instagram at @CTVCalgaryWeather.
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