After a week of extreme cold warnings, intense winds and slippery roads, the temperatures have risen into the positives.

Brian Proctor, Meteorologist with Environment Canada, says the rest of the week should be relatively warm.

"Well I have some good news and bad news. It looks like the rest of the week will be warm. However, late Saturday night we will get a surge of arctic air coming down and cause temperatures to cool down and float around -10 degrees."

Meteorologists have determined there has been a high amplitude pattern across most of Canada over the last month, causing the weather to alternate between warm cells and cold cells depending on where the upper ridge shifts. This tends to be the cause for our sudden and extreme weather. 

"Right now the upper ridge is built really strongly across much of British Columbia, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories."

The ridge has been moving eastwards and pushing into Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes and the warm air is flooding in behind the ridge from British Columbia. The warm temperatures the result of a Chinook.

"We are not seeing the typical Chinook. It's really more of a case of that warmer air flooding in behind the ridge."

Although many people are happy with the increase in temperatures, there is a negative. Sometimes the sudden change in temperatures can cause street drainage systems to run into problems. This happens when cold temperatures causing water to freeze are followed by a sudden increase in temperature. When this happens, snow on the road melts to water which surges the drains and may not be able to pass the ice causing backing up. 

"Often times we see these freeze-thaw cycles or this high amplitude shift from cold to warm that we have seen in the last couple months in central and southern Alberta."

 

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