'Unusual' winters likely the new norm in Calgary: ECCC

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) meteorologists say Calgarians should get used to unusual winter weather patterns.

So far this season, the city has lacked precipitation and only seen bitter cold in small bursts, despite it being a La Niña year.

Between September and Jan. 3, 42 centimetres of snow has fallen. That’s 20 centimetres off the 10-year average.

“With climate change, what we’re seeing is more extreme,” Alysa Pederson, a warning preparedness meteorologist with ECCC, said.

“So that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to have less snowy years and less cold years, it just means that we might go a couple of years of very, very warm and not so much snow, and then we might have a couple back-to-back years that are extremely snowy.”

As for what that’ll mean for the rest of this strange Calgary winter, Pedersen says she expects more snow in February and March.

Whether it’ll be enough to get us near the average trends is hard to say. She calls the La Niña event a “weak” one, but also points to a changing definition.

“The La Niña of today are actually seeing global temperature trends of what we saw an El Niño do 20 years ago,” she said.

“So it’s going to mean everybody is kind of adapting to what the new normal is and what the extreme differences from winter to winter might mean for them.”