After an extremely cloudy, soggy two-week streak of weather over the Red River Valley, sunshine is in the cards. Lots of it.
Several days of warm temperatures and sunshine are expected across Southern Manitoba, a welcome change from the cloudy, wet weather that has persisted the past few weeks. Photo: Brad V.
An upper ridge will build in over the Central Prairies through the weekend, bringing plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures to the Red River Valley. Daytime highs will sit near 25°C today and tomorrow. Highs will drop a little bit on Sunday as some cooler air slides down from Central Manitoba, giving us a daytime high near 22 or 23°C. Overnight lows through the next few days will range from 9-14°C.
More heat and humidity is forecast to build in through the first half of next week, pushing daytime highs up into the high 20’s and overnight lows into the high teens. The upper ridge is forecast to break down in the second half of next week, bringing the risk of stormier weather back to Winnipeg.
One more day of showers is in store for Winnipeg as another upper low tracks across the province before conditions finally begin to improve as the long-wave upper trough that has been quasi-stationary over the Prairies shifts off to the east and upper ridging begins building in.
6-hour accumulated rainfall for Thursday afternoon from the GEM-REG. Showers with a slight chance of a thundershower are expected through much of Southern Manitoba today.
Another low will track across Southern Manitoba today, bringing with it more cloud and a chance of showers. This system brought widespread thundershowers to Alberta & Saskatchewan yesterday with multiple sightings of funnel clouds as well. Activity will be more subdued over Manitoba today as the system won’t have quite as much energy to work with as yesterday; in general the clouds should break up over the RRV a little this afternoon with scattered showers developing over SW Manitoba and pushing eastwards through the afternoon. Rain will likely be hit and miss as the disorganized mass pushes eastwards. Showers will move into the Winnipeg area by mid-afternoon and will push out/diminish in the early evening as daytime heating diminishes. There’s a slight chance for a thundershower or two, but that chance is marginal at best.
As the low moves off into NW Ontario tomorrow evening, it will mark the transition to a markedly different weather pattern. Through the day on Thursday, upper ridging will begin to build it’s way into the Prairies. We’ll finally see the sun again on Thursday as temperatures climb into the low 20’s across the RRV. There’s a slight chance of some showers/thunderstorms over SW Manitoba and the RRV as a shortwave slides down through the area. After that, it’s all sunshine as the upper ridge continues building into our area. Temperatures should push into the mid-20’s for the weekend with plenty of sunshine. Finally, some time to dry out!
This week will continue to be unsettled weather-wise. It appears that we will see the chance for rain virtually every day for the next several days.
A trough of low pressure over the Prairies (the jet stream is in blue)
A trough of low pressure sitting over the Prairie provinces will be responsible for our unsettled weather over the coming days. This trough is created due to the fact that the jet stream will be to our south, allowing cooler air from the north to spill down into lower latitudes. As weather systems track along the jet stream they will create chances for rain in Southern Manitoba. It appears that rain is a possibility on every day from Monday through Thursday. At this time it looks as though rainfall amounts on Monday and Tuesday will be fairly light, if it rains in your location at all, but the precipitation forecast for later in the week is less clear.
Due to the cloudy and potentially wet conditions expected on Monday and Tuesday, temperatures won’t be very warm. Highs on Monday will generally be in the high teens over Southern Manitoba, except for border regions and parts of south-eastern Manitoba where temperatures should be closer to twenty degrees. Tuesday is likewise expected to remain cool, with highs in the mid to upper teens expected. Temperatures on Wednesday will be governed by when and if it rains, but it doesn’t look like it will be warmer than twenty for midweek (if it indeed gets that warm at all).
Too much uncertainty exists in the forecast at this point to talk about the weather much beyond Wednesday. However, at this time it doesn’t appear that we will be going back into a prolonged spell of nice weather in the short-term.
A large waterspout made landfall on the islands of Venice on Tuesday, June 12th. The tornado caused considerable damage on the islands but missed the picturesque city centre of Venice altogether. As the waterspout made landfall on Venice’s lagoon, it traveled towards the island of Saint’Erasmo and Certosa where there were numerous reports of trees being shredded and uprooted, roofs being torn off and the city’s well-known gondolas being thrashed around. Two significant structures that were reported as being damaged include a soccer stadium and a naval academy where a tree fell, trapping 15 students inside the building. Winds were estimated to be howling at a rate of about 145km/h inside the twister at the time it made landfall, classifying it as an EF-1 tornado under the Enhanced Fujita Scale. One man was injured and the damages are estimated to be near a couple of millions of dollars.
Picture of the waterspout/tornado as it makes landfall. (Source: Cristian Cavallarin)
Damage on one of Venice’s islands. (Source: EPA)
Waterspouts in the region are usually associated with small spin-ups and pulse storms over a large body of water, which typically dissipate when making landfall. However, this waterspout in particular had not dissipated as it moved over the islands due to its unusual strength and cone-like shape – signifying strong rotation present. According to a satellite picture taken at the time, it appears a shortwave provided the necessary ingredients to spawn the tornado and lengthen the duration of the storms.
Satellite picture on the morning of June 12th, 2012. Approximate location of Venice, Italy represented by the green dot on the map. (Source: EarthSky/CIMSS)
Even though tornadoes are not as common in Europe as they are in North America, Italy has seen its fair share of deadly tornadoes this past century. A couple of notable tornadoes are:
-The Montello tornado in 1930 – possibly the strongest tornado ever to touch down in Europe, it brought gusts of over 500km/h and completely levelled brick buildings.
-The Venice tornado outbreak of 1970 – which included a notable tornado that went through Venice causing deaths and destruction throughout the city.
View of the tornado from downtown Venice. (Source: The Telegraph)
Storms were reported to have cleared out of Venice’s region near the end of this week. The weekend forecast in that area calls for light showers on Saturday and all-out sun on Sunday.
A couple other notable events that have happened in other parts of the world since last weekend include: a hurricane spinning up in the Eastern Pacific heading towards Mexico’s western coast; and significant flooding in Pensacola, Florida where over 540mm (more than a year’s worth of precipitation in Winnipeg, Manitoba) fell in 24 hours!
