Mountain Weather Forecast

The building ridge of high pressure will have two impacts. The first is high freezing levels and/or above freezing layers (AFLs) with warm alpine temperatures. For southwestern BC, freezing levels will hover between 2500-3000m through Tuesday with alpine temperatures reaching 3 to 10 degrees depending on your proximity to the US border and elevation. Further east through the Kootenay-Boundary, southern Purcells, and South Rockies an AFL will bring positive temperatures (ranging from 2 to 5 degrees) with the top of the AFL resting near 3000m. Warm air will take longer to settle into the Columbias but positive alpine temperatures of 0 to 3 degrees will slowly drift into the area between elevations of 1700-2800m.

The second impact of incoming warm air aloft is the creation and persistence of temperature inversions which trap moisture in the boundary layer leading to valley cloud, also called low-level stratus. Deep valleys with large, open water bodies such as Kootenay Lake, Arrow Lake, Kinbasket and the rest of the Rocky Mountain Trench will only see small breaks in the cloud layer in the afternoons, before cloud reforms in the overnight periods. Luckily, as the title of this blog entry indicates, sunshine can be found by heading for higher terrain.

Deflected and weakening weather systems will bring a light dusting of snow to the northern Rockies early this morning and possibly again Sunday night, whereas precipitation will last into Monday morning for the Northwest Coastal ranges.

1 of 0

The 500mb animation illustrates the ongoing light precipitation for the northwest through Monday as weak systems are deflected northwards by the building upper ridge. 500mb heights start decreasing throughout the province Monday night and Tuesday indicating the break down of the ridge and the eventual departure of warm alpine temperatures. The transition to more active weather late in the week will be messy as an Arctic front moving down from the north battles an incoming low pressure system coming up from the southwest. Incoming snow/rain, wind (and from what direction) for each of the forecast regions depends on which of these features dominates the weather map.