Josh Classen's forecast: Winter starts, but the warmth continues

Published: December 21, 2023 at 9:14AM EST

The Winter Solstice occurs this evening as the sun's most direct rays will be over the Tropic of Capricorn (the furthest south they'll get all year).

So, today's our longest night and shortest day. We'll get seven hours, 27 minutes, and 39 seconds of daylight today.

Starting tomorrow, days gradually get a bit longer (but only by a few seconds at first).

By the end of the month, we'll have about six more minutes of daylight.

While all that's happening, another bubble of warmer air moves in and temperatures will climb to a handful of degrees above 0 C this afternoon and Friday.

A short-lived upper trough sweeps across the province on the weekend and that'll knock temperatures down slightly.

But, an even stronger upper ridge appears set to move in next week and that should boost temperatures at least to the 3 to 7 C range and possibly even closer to 10 C on Wednesday and Thursday.

The latest outlook indicates some cooling (and possibly some snow) around the 30th/31st. But, there's fairly low confidence in that forecast, so we'll see how that develops in the coming week.

Bottom line: This will very likely end up in the top-three warmest Decembers on record for Edmonton.

If the forecast holds, we're on pace to have an average high of 2 C. Only 1999 and 1997 have average highs that could equal or beat that. December '99 had an average high of 2.1 C and December '97 had an average high of 2.0 C.

Given the warmth we've had this month, we're also now on pace for 2023 to become Edmonton's warmest year on record.

As for precipitation, there was a lengthy band of freezing rain and mixed precipitation that pushed through central and north-central Alberta overnight. It broke around the Edmonton area, so most of the city got missed.

That area of light, wet snow is now moving through southeast Alberta.

We also have a bit of light snow moving into northwest Alberta this morning. That'll slide across to the Fort McMurray area by late this afternoon.

After today, it's a fairly dry and snow-free forecast for most of the province through the weekend and into early next week.

In fact, there's no chance of snow between now and Christmas in the Edmonton area or across the rest of central and north-central Alberta.

It looks like there might be a bit of snow near Jasper Friday night and that'll move southeast through Friday night/Saturday morning.

Red Deer has a chance of some snow overnight Friday into early Saturday morning, but most (possibly all) of the snow will stay west and south of Red Deer.

Calgary and area gets some snow early Saturday morning, done by the afternoon. So, if you're travelling that way this weekend, keep that in mind.

Sunday and Monday should be sunny right across Alberta.