Freezing fog Friday morning kicks off rapidly deteriorating conditions

Temperatures on the way down in Calgary. Jodi Hughes has a look at the five-day forecast from the Sky Watch Weather Centre.

Freezing fog hung over much of the City of Calgary early Friday as a precursor to a very different weather story compared to the unusually warm conditions over the past week.

Visibility was compromised and some surfaces started to ice up as the supercooled water-droplets within the freezing fog froze on contact.

A fog advisory was issued for the City of Calgary after 9 a.m., with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) explaining, “low visibility in fog will continue through the morning.”

Cold air started to move in to Alberta late Thursday, meeting up with a warm and moisture-laden system from the Pacific.

While temperatures fell quickly across the north, heavy and wet snow around the Edmonton region and the B.C. interior prompted snowfall warnings.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued winter storm warnings for a large portion of the north central region of British Columbia and some southern B.C. highways due to a high likelihood of rapidly accumulating snow, poor visibility and the potential for road conditions to deteriorate quickly.

According to the national weather agency, “a frontal system moving through the interior will continue to give snow today. Total snowfall amounts near 25 cm can be expected by this evening.”

Road conditions around the capital region were reported as being snow and ice-covered as of 6 a.m., with some area-cameras from 511 Alberta displaying snow coming in nearly parallel to the surface.

As of 9:30 a.m. Friday, impacts to travel from the past 24 hours of precipitation, the leading edge of this incoming frontal system were noted along the B.C. coastline throughout the interior, and in north and central Alberta.

Extreme Cold warnings were issued for northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, and these will be expanded throughout the weekend as temperatures across the country plummet.

By the end of the weekend polar air is expected to flow right across the country, which will likely mean all of Canada will be well-below seasonal temperatures to start next week.

The forecast high in Calgary on Friday is -2 C, with the temperature expected to fall to -10 C by the end of the evening.

That -10 C will be the peak temperature on Saturday, achieved just after midnight.

By Saturday afternoon, Calgary will likely sit around -20 C and will not rise above that until at least Tuesday afternoon.

For context the normal high this time of year is -2 C with a low of -14 C.

Another sharp change is expected to initiate at the end of next week as the daytime high jumps up 10 degrees from Wednesday to Thursday.

Before that happens, conditions will be mostly cloudy over the weekend and noticeably colder than the end of January.

Calgary should see some light and scattered snow over the next 24 to 48 hours, but the bulk of precipitation will be west and north - in the B.C. interior, as well as north and central Alberta.