A winter storm warning is in effect for Airdrie, Cochrane and Rocky View today (February 7).

Dan Kulak, Meteorologist with Environment Canada, explained much of southern Alberta is expected to eventually also fall under a winter storm warning today as well.

The storm is caused by cool air from the Prairies colliding with warm air from the Pacific coming over the mountains.

"As we learned in school, maybe many years ago or maybe you're still in school, warm air tends to rise and cool air tends to sink. That cool arctic air tends to stay near the ground, the warm air tends to get pushed up over top of it and as it does it forms clouds, precipitation."

Kulak said there is a flow pattern with moisture coming out of the Pacific across BC and over a cold dome of air in Alberta. The biggest contrast between warm and cold is over southwest Alberta, resulting in heavy snow.

"That means snowfall accumulations as much as 25 centimeters in some places, maybe even more than that. Anybody contemplating travel toward the foothills could be easily in the 30 or 40 range or even more than that, but generally around Airdrie we're expecting 25 or so in the next 36 hours or so."

Kulak expected the snow would taper off at some point on Thursday.

"We are expecting it to continue to get heavier as the day goes on here with the heaviest snow tonight and into tomorrow. Certainly by Thursday evening you should a bit see a let up in this. Essentially it's close to a 36 hour event, between 24 and 36 hours."

According to Kulak, Airdrie should see a return to blue sunny skies and temperatures around 0 on Friday. That holds with the pattern we've seen all winter, where Airdrie gets a large dump of snow that lets up before another dump of snow. Kulak was not sure how long that pattern will last.

 

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