Saskatchewan’s first snow of the season could arrive this weekend

by Nick Nielsen

Over the course of this weekend, a weather system travelling into Saskatchewan from the west is expected to hit the West Central Saskatchewan area near the Battlefords, then up to the northern area of the province and hit communities like La Ronge.

The tail end of that weather system will likely drop the first flakes of snow on some communities in the province.

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“We’re getting a little bit of a sort of a frontal wave that’s going to track across sort of the west central Saskatchewan and then up in towards northern Saskatchewan,” said Brian Proctor, Environment Canada meteorologist.

“We’ve got a little bit of coolness associated with the sort of back edge of that system, so it’s likely that we’re going to see some flurry activity associated with that. Probably Meadow Lake, you have a good chance of seeing some flurries on Sunday, the Battlefords as well, and then probably up towards La Ronge.”

As the system enters the province in the Battlefords area, any chances of flurries are likely going to be minimal. As the system starts to curl and head north, areas like La Ronge could see more snowfall.

As the day goes on, though, the front of the system is expected to hit places like Prince Albert and Melfort, but that’s only expected to bring rain instead of the flurries expected in other parts of the province.

“In general terms, it’s looking a little bit unsettled, and we’re going to be sort of flirting with a little bit of flurry activity mixed in at times with some rain. Depending upon what time that precipitation falls in the daytime, we could see a little bit more rain or a little bit more snow, but it’s really going to be sort of floating just above the freezing point from a temperature point of view.”

Whether it’s rain or snow that falls in your community Sunday night and heading into Monday morning, it isn’t expected to be a lot except in some of the northern regions.

“As it moves north of Prince Albert, it moves north into the Prince Albert National Park area up towards La Ronge, that’s where we got the better chance of seeing it organized. If you look at our forecast right now for La Ronge, we’ve got the forecast for Sunday night into Monday is periods of rain and temperature +2 for a low in there, so it’s really got a good chance of seeing some wet snow in that area.”

This potential snowfall coming up this weekend is likely going to be an isolated snowfall. A full-on winter snowfall isn’t expected for at least another few weeks, but when that snowfall does come, expect a snowier winter than normal.

“I think we’re probably going to be safe through Thanksgiving at this point in time. We start getting to the end of the second week, the third week of October, it starts looking a bit more problematic from a snowfall point of view.

“Longer term, it’s definitely looking like a bit of a weak La Nina winter, and weak La Ninas for us tend to be a little colder than normal and definitely carry more precipitation than normal moving forward. So that’s probably a good news story from an agricultural point of view. The more precipitation we get, the better our soil moisture conditions will likely be in the spring.”

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