Recent above-normal temperatures in Red Deer expected to continue

“That is the indication we’re seeing for May as well. There will be more days above normal than below normal,” Pederson said.

However, she said, while most of the upcoming precipitation should fall as rain, Red Deer receives on average 10 centimetres of snow in May.

“Keep the shovels nearby,” she said. “You can put them off the front porch, but put them maybe in the garage… The curse of the May long weekend always exists.”

“We are under a ridge right now, which is a big area of high pressure where we get warm temperatures, mostly clear skies, that looks to continue, but we get those same big rainfall events we get in June. If we get an event like that in May, we usually get snowfall out of it, so it’s not totally gone, but close enough.”

Despite the recent warm temperatures, it has been a cool spring so far, as Pederson said, temperatures in March and April were below normal. There’s also been a decent amount of snow across the Rockies and southern Alberta during that time.

In Red Deer, April was drier than normal, receiving only approximately 10 mm of the typical 28 mm of precipitation the area usually receives.

There were a couple of warm-ups during that time, including one in mid-March and another in the middle of April.

Looking ahead to the summer, Pederson explained that in May, June, and July, it will be drier than normal in eastern Alberta but will be wetter than normal from the Foothills up towards the Edson area.

“When we look at Red Deer being in the central area between those two zones, the certainty isn’t very high one way or another, whether we’re going to have a lot of precipitation or not.”

by Ian Gustafson

Recent above-normal temperatures in Red Deer expected to continue

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