Airdrie might be seeing some cold weather and precipitation tonight and tomorrow when a low-pressure system hits the area.

Kyle Fugare, a meteorologist with Environment Canda, describes what Airdrie could be seeing weather-wise.

"There's a pretty strong low-pressure system moving into the area tomorrow. Right now, there's still a lot of low clouds and fog in the area that's kind of lingering from this weekend. That's expected to clear late this morning into this afternoon and it will be sunny but, tomorrow, this low-pressure system comes through and it is going to bring some precipitation in the area. It's likely going to start tomorrow afternoon. It's probably going to start as rain with the temperature being above zero but, as we get into the nighttime period and it cools, it will likely switch over to snow. There's a lot of variability in how much snow is expected depending on when it switches from rain to snow, so the most likely scenario is that it will be around 2-4cm overnight but it could be as high as 5-10 if that snow switches over pretty early and lasts well into Wednesday morning."

Fugare says there is a chance that thunderstorms could be appearing all over the south-west portion of Alberta.

"There have been some thunderstorms in Alberta already this year. When you get these strong spring storms, sometimes you can have enough instability to get thunderstorms. Sometimes you have different types of precipitation falling other than rain. You can have thundersnow, you can have snow grains falling with it. It looks like there is a quite a bit of instability, it's a pretty potent low-pressure system tomorrow, so it looks like there will be some thunderstorms in Alberta, hard to know if it will actually affect Airdrie."

The fog on the weekend, Fugare says, is common around this time of year with the cold nights and the increase of moisture due to melted snow.

"The spring is actually the time of year that we do see a lot of these large scale areas for fog. You have a lot of moisture near the surface of the earth because you have all this snow melting. So, at night, if you have a really still atmosphere and you have the cooling that happens at night, it can cool the air down till it's saturated and when you have all this moisture near the surface you can get fog. It is the time of year (where) you can see those foggy areas, especially when you have a ridge of high pressure like we've seen over Alberta towards the end of last week."

The low-pressure system should be passing soon and ordinary temperatures are expected to return.

"Looks like, after Wednesday, the temperatures do start to rise again, they start to become more normal. A normal high for this time of year is plus 6 and an overnight low of minus 8. And that's looking like what we're going to see near the end of this week. The skies will clear a bit as a ridge of high pressure moves in. Temperatures will get up to that 6-8 degree temperature for the end of the week."

 

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