Westlock has had a larger dump of snow and a few more freezing rain warnings than normal this winter, but nothing too extreme, an Environment Canada meteorologist says.
Dan Kulak said in total there have been six days where Environment Canada has issued freezing rain warnings in the Westlock area: Nov. 13, 28, and 30; Dec. 14 and 22; and Jan. 2.
“I don’t have stats, but subjectively it seems like there has been more this year than in previous years,” he said.
As for why, however, Kulak said it would be difficult to pin down the exact reason. Weather is a complex system of cause and effect, but it’s very difficult to pin down specific causes.
“It’s not something we see all the time, but I can’t find a specific concrete explanation for why it is,” he said. “It’s just the vagaries and the changeability of the weather.”
This year there has also been a higher-than-normal amount of precipitation, with heavy snowfalls blanketing much of the province throughout November and December — but again he was unable to provide specific figures showing current levels as compared to previous years.
“You could reasonably say there’s been more than the normal amount of snowfall this winter, at least up until the Christmastime period,” Kulak said.
Most of the weather monitoring stations — particularly in the rural areas — are unmanned and so precise data about snowfall or other precipitation aren’t available.
Whitecourt has the closest manned station, and as of Jan. 7 there was 68 cm of snow on the ground at the Whitecourt airport.
And although the term “polar vortex” is factoring highly in news reports about harsh weather on the east coast of Canada and the United States, he said it is not a new phenomenon.
“The polar vortex has been around as long as people have been on the planet, but this year somebody started to use that term,” he said.
A polar vortex is a persistent weather pattern located near the Earth’s poles that is basically a cyclone that gets stronger in the winter and weaker in the summer.
It is generally located around Hudson’s Bay or northern Quebec, but can move around as far west as northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. When that happens, temperatures can plummet in Alberta.
“Usually when we do get the really cold air in Alberta, the -35 and -40 (Celsius) that last a few days in a row, those are the days when that polar vortex has maybe shifted a little bit to the west,” he said.
