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April 19 to 21: an (almost) perfect storm
Patrick Keller
Lakeside Leader
You only needed to look out the window last week to see the weather was bad.
According to Environment Canada, it was worse than that.
By Monday, an average of 50 cm had fallen and 39 cm of the white stuff had stuck, smashing both minimum temperature and snow fall records for much of the province – except Slave Lake!
The storm covered all parts of northern Alberta. From Calling Lake to Fort Mac and east to Grand Prairie; it seemed that no one was spared.
Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor responded to our inquiries about the storm with shovels full of useful and surprising data.
“What’s most interesting is that this is a cold low front. The upper level disturbances are moving very slowly,” said Proctor. “The system moved over the Rockies on Saturday, drifting northward toward the Northwest Territories and leaving an average of 50 cm on the ground.” By midnight of the 21st, 65.9 cm of snow had fallen. By Tuesday, another 20 cm had been added.
“We are seeing a lot of temperature records, as you can imagine,” said the meteorologist. He reported record minimum temperatures in Coronation, Lloydminster, Cold lake, Grand Prairie, High Prairie and many others.
In Slave Lake, weather data has been kept since 1921. On April 21, 1951, we recorded a minimum low temperature of -12.2. This year, we narrowly avoided breaking that number, coming in at -11 on April 21.
Being socked in by the slow moving snow storm, says Proctor, may have kept our daily temperature out of the record books last Monday, and even the heavy snow load fell just short of a Slave Lake record. According to Environment Canada, April 21, 1985 had more daily snowfall, making the books at 50 cm in a day.
The meteorologist added that a storm of this size is not unusual for this time of year, but typically takes the form of a spring rain. “In normal cases, the amount of snow received would amount to about 110 millimetres of rain,” said Proctor.
The several days of heavy snow had road crews and anyone with equipment on the job keeping the main arteries cleared. However, all the work done on Monday was quickly erased by Tuesday night.
Reporting to town council about the storm, Roger Borchert of the Town of Slave Lake noted that every piece of equipment in town was on retainer and working hard by Monday morning. A lot of vehicles were stuck, and a lot folks spent their whole day digging and pulling out cars for both neighbors and strangers. Only a couple of collisions were reported, and no injuries.
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