Prévisions météo en montagne

Following an unusually warm and dry fall, is a colder and (mostly) drier start to winter and today/tonight's system does little to narrow the precipitation deficit. Light snowfall will dust most mountain ranges starting near Smithers and Pine Pass early this morning and reach Kootenay Pass and Waterton Lakes National Park by the wee hours of Wednesday. Moderate ridgetop winds ahead of the front give way to strong, widespread northerlies or northwesterlies once the cold front passes.

For those seeking more significant snowfall, you'll have to head to White Pass on the South Klondike Highway. A new weather system approaching from the Gulf of Alaska generates moderate snowfall late today and overnight. Strong southwesterly winds and blowing snow will make travel above the Pass challenging.

As the second weather system evolves, light to moderate snowfall may spill onto the Canadian side of the Coast Mountains, north of Meziadin Junction. Otherwise, the main story is strong to extreme province-wide ridgetop winds. See the Day 2 and beyond forecast for more details.

Check out the Day 5-7 tab for a sneak peak at weekend weather!

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The 500 mb animation shows an upper ridge over BC gradually giving way to a passing upper trough by late tonight. As the trough passes, northwesterly flow ushers in a slightly cooler air mass province-wide. Tightly-packed, west-east oriented geopotential height lines steer the next weather system into the Alaskan Panhandle. Wednesday night and Thursday, the geopotential height lines tilt to become northwest-southeast over BC and the AB Rockies. Wind at the ridgetops will blow roughly parallel to these lines.

Friday and into the weekend, the Canadian model shown above indicates an impending arctic outbreak as the purple dashed thickness lines (associated with frigid temperatures) dive south out of the Yukon. This Canadian model output initially looked like an outlier solution but foreign weather model guidance is converging towards a plunging arctic front. Just how cold it gets and how much snow accompanies the leading edge of the front is still up for debate but it would be smart to pull out the warm socks, gloves, and face coverings.