First Snowstorm of the Season Takes Aim at Saskatchewan and Manitoba With Up to 30cm of Snow Between Wednesday and Friday

A slow-moving system currently developing over Alberta is expected to bring a wintery blast of heavy snow beginning early Wednesday morning through Central Saskatchewan around Meadow Lake. This band of snow will slowly spread to the southeast towards the Yorkton region by late Wednesday morning and start to affect parts of Southern Manitoba during the day on Wednesday.

There was some uncertainty regarding precipitation type particularly through Southern Manitoba although the latest data appears to point towards a colder solution which would allow for more snow instead of rain mixing in and decreasing accumulation. As such, Winnipeg and most areas except for right along the International border will see predominately snow (likely in the form of heavy wet snow) with accumulation occurring later in the day as temperatures drop further below the freezing mark. Keep in mind that this event is still heavily temperature-dependent and a few degrees can make the difference between a few slushy centimetres and 20+cm of snow.

Snow will continue overnight into Thursday as the low-pressure system responsible for this snow stalls our and bands of precipitation wraps back in through Saskatchewan and Manitoba all day on Thursday. We will start to see some clearing later on Thursday for Saskatchewan with it lingering into early Friday for Southern Manitoba. All of the snow should be finished by Friday morning across the region except for some scattered flurries across Southwestern Manitoba.

As for accumulation, this is really tricky due to the issue with temperatures which can be hard to predict with melting. Although our target zone for the heaviest snowfall includes parts of Southeastern Saskatchewan around Yorkton and extending into Southern Manitoba around the higher elevations for Dauphin and the Interlakes region. This area can expect between 20-30cm of accumulation, but some models are pointing towards as much as 40-50cm of accumulation in localized areas mainly around Dauphin. The rest of Southern Manitoba including Winnipeg and Brandon extending through Central Saskatchewan will generally see between 10-20cm of accumulation over the next three days with most of the accumulation coming on Thursday.