There’s something about this particular week that has become synonymous with bad weather.
Last year a powerful snowstorm swept through the region on April 11. It brought strong winds and lots of snow. In fact, it was likely the biggest dump of snow we’d seen since November 2019.
(For what it’s worth, on April 10, I was sitting on my patio well into the night, writing stories and listening to music).
And now this year, we’re supposed to get another winter wallop that was scheduled to start April 12. One of those Colorado lows – a meteorologist’s fancy term for a nasty snowstorm that’s going to bring snow, wind, blowing snow and a real mess for the highways.
(It’s time to abandon the fancy terms like Alberta Clipper and Colorado low? Just call it a dangerous storm that will bring lots of wind and snow, result in a blizzard warning, and leave below-average temperatures in its wake. It’s also time to say good-bye to the polar vortex, the heat dome and the atmospheric river).
We’ll see whether this particular storm lives up to the hype, or if it skirts by. And if we do get hit hard, it sounds like our friends in North Dakota will be hit even harder.
I’m smart enough to know that we need the moisture. I can see it in the grass around town when I go for walks. I know that spring runoff was expected to be lower than normal this year (although if we get the snow, that could change things).
When we had the snow last April, it was a welcome relief for our producers, as it meant they didn’t have to seed their crops into parched ground. It was still a challenging year for them in terms of moisture, but at least they received a little bit of help.
The situation isn’t as dire this year, but we didn’t get as much snow as other areas of Saskatchewan in the winter of 2021-22, and the snow we did have was gone by the end of March, so our situation isn’t ideal.
Snow right now is good. What’s in the forecast for this week isn’t good.
In a perfect world, we’d have lots of snow every winter, for our farmers and outdoor enthusiasts, and have it gone by April 1, to be replaced by nice, warm, calm, sunny days, so that I can enjoy my outdoor activities. When that happens, I’ll be sure to write about it. At the same time I write about pigs flying.
The timing of this storm is less than ideal for me because my folks are on their way out for a visit. They are supposed to arrive on April 13. I doubt that will happen, but my fingers are crossed.
If nothing else, it appears they’ll get to enjoy a few days of Saskatchewan winter in April. Maybe we’ll have a snowball fight on my deck.
They’re smart enough to not chance travelling once it gets nasty outside. While they’ve been living in B.C.’s beautiful Fraser Valley since 1987, both were born and raised on the Prairies, and so they know how nasty the roads can be and how quickly the conditions can deteriorate. We also lived in McBride and Fort St. John, B.C. Dad was RCMP and mom was a nurse. So they would have encountered people whose lives have been adversely affected by a foolish decision to head out on the roads.
If we get an advisory to stay off the roads, please follow the advice. It might not seem like you have very far to travel. But if conditions get nasty, then even the drive from Estevan to Bienfait or Hitchcock can be dangerous.
Nobody wants to be stuck on the highway in the middle of a blizzard because they decided to chance a trip, only to have the highway closed partway through the journey.
And you don’t want to force emergency crews to respond to an accident scene because you decided to travel on a highway in a blizzard. If it’s hazardous for you to drive, then it’s hazardous to have a fire truck, police car or ambulance on the road.
Hopefully, we get the moisture we need, and the storm isn’t as serious as projected.
And hopefully next year these days in mid-April can break this two-year meteorological curse.
