Temperatures dropping for start of the Thanksgiving weekend

A shift in weather patterns will align with a cool down for the west over the next couple of days.

Daytime highs on Wednesday will be a few degrees colder than the past few days with a second drop of around 5 C by Thursday.

The main weather maker for the start of the week was a ridge of high pressure that had stalled out in the upper levels, but that ridge has already started to track east and will continue to do so throughout the day Wednesday.

Behind it, cooler air will sink south toward the southern border of Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan, bringing both daytime highs and overnight lows closer to a seasonal range for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Rain will continue along the northern edge of that departing ridge or into areas west of the QEII and into south-central and central Alberta on Wednesday, with a slight chance of rain for the Calgary area later in the day.

It will also be windy in the southern corner of the province, but not quite as windy as it was on Monday and Tuesday.

The end of this long weekend will be much warmer than the start when another ridge of high pressure moves in from the Pacific Coast and pushes as far north at the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Conditions should be mostly consistent with more sunshine than cloud over the next five days.