Copious amounts of wildfire smoke has descended into southern Manitoba behind a cold front that slumped through the region overnight. Showers and thunderstorms moving through the region will do little to improve conditions today, and the smokey weather will stick around for much of the weekend.

Smokier conditions moved into the Red River Valley overnight behind the cold front that slumped through the region. This has resulted in degraded to poor air quality throughout the region. Exact air quality values will vary over the next few days, but smoke will be widespread across the region through the weekend. There is a chance for a reprieve on Sunday morning, but would be short-lived as smoke from the Saskatchewan wildfires would move into the region in the afternoon. Special air quality statements and/or air quality warnings will be possible throughout the weekend.
In other weather, a shortwave tracking into Manitoba will bring a chance of showers and thunderstorms today. There doesn’t look to be an organized severe weather threat, but if much of the activity manages to hold off until later in the day, a marginally severe thunderstorm may be possible. If showers and thunderstorms develop earlier in the day and are more widespread, the threat of severe weather will be diminished greatly.
Temperatures will be much cooler today; not only will today’s daytime high in the low 20s be nearly 10 °C cooler than yesterday, the humidity will be much lower with comfortable dew point values in the low teens. Winds will be out of the northwest at 20 to 30 km/h today.
The chance of showers will taper off overnight as the cloud cover breaks up and the winds shift more westerly. Temperatures will dip to a low in the mid-teens.

For the weekend, a ridge of high pressure will slide through the province and bring settling conditions this weekend. The Winnipeg area should see partly cloudy skies this weekend as daytime highs climb to seasonably mild values in the mid- to upper-20s. With comfortable humidity levels persisting through the weekend, overnight lows will dip down towards the mid-teens. Those west-northwest winds will continue through the weekend.
Long Range Outlook
Another low will bring unsettled weather to the region to start next week. After a couple days of cloudier conditions with a chance of rain, conditions will settle by mid-week and the region should see partly cloudy skies and near-seasonal temperatures the rest of the week.
Winds will be predominantly northerly to start next week, which will likely mean plenty of smoke throughout the region. By the second half of the week, a southerly flow is forecast to develop which should help gradually clear the smoke out of the region.
Today’s seasonal daytime high in Winnipeg is 26 °C while the seasonal overnight low is 13 °C.