Snow hit the region late Tuesday. A snowfall warning has been issued to Calgary and surrounding areas that is expected to last through the week — southern Alberta can expect 10 to 30 centimetres of snow by Friday morning.Posted: Mar 20, 2024 2:54 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago
As of Wednesday morning, Calgary has already seen eight centimetres of snow at the airport. The snowfall is expected to ease in the afternoon before intensifying again through the remainder of the week. "Say we get 25 centimetres of snow. When we actually melt that 25 centimetres, we're really only getting maybe 15 to 20 millimetres of actual liquid," said Pederson."This snowfall event, while it's really nice to have and it does help … one snowfall event likely isn't going to make too much of a difference because the actual water content in that snow isn't very high.
John Pomeroy is the Canada research chair in Water Resources and Climate Change with the University of Saskatchewan. He's based in Canmore, Alta., and says any moisture helps, especially up in the mountains. "You can see an early snowmelt again and that's what got us into trouble last year. It basically gave us an extra month of summer and we didn't have enough water to get through it and we ended up in a very severe drought. A second year of that group would be disastrous in some cases."
As for Calgary's road conditions, Chris McGeachy of the City of Calgary mobility department says they've been following the forecast and preparing for this spring cold front.