REGINA, Sask. — The wild weather bomb that blasted Regina from balmy fall to a wicked winter mere days before Halloween will likely be one for the record books.
"This was the king of storms," David Phillips, Environment Canada senior climatologist, said during a stop in the ice and snow encrusted city on Thursday.
Phillips explained that Tuesday's storm arose from "the lowest atmospheric pressure that we've ever seen for a non-hurricane event in North America."
He likened it to a hurricane hitting Saskatchewan. "What happens is that the storm explodes very quickly in a short period of time. You can't necessarily see it coming."
While weather bombs are very rare on the Prairies and central Canada, they're quite common in Atlantic Canada, where warm southern air clashes with the cold to fuel the storm.
"Like a bomb, it explodes and it's got a lot of force to it ... It intensifies in a very short period of time and just grows and develops into a monster kind of storm."
From a meteorological point of view, a bomb means a drop in pressure of 24 millibars (used to measure atmospheric pressure) in 24 hours. "This one far exceeded that," he said. The pressure fell 27 millibars in 21 hours. It unleashed heavy wet snow and 85 km/h winds in Regina and area.
And we may have no one to blame but ourselves.
Phillips, who was in sunny Alberta when the storm hit, said it appears the fault lies not with an Alberta Clipper, but likely "a Saskatchewan Slasher."
"All of the misery began in Saskatchewan and then just spread eastward and southward," he said. "You had tornadoes south of the Mason-Dixon line, people injured and buildings collapsing in the United States, you had some of the strongest winds ever in the mid-western part of the United States and in southern Ontario, and now in Atlantic Canada."
He noted the storm was perfect, at least weather-wise. "It had everything to it. It had some cold air. It had some snow, freezing rain. It had some exceedingly warm temperatures, double-digit, close to 20 degrees, but winds that people have never seen in southern Ontario, a lot of damage and power outages. And it was absolutely in the heart of the continent."
Unfortunately, it may also be a harbinger of what's in store this winter.
Most weather experts are predicting, in the words of Phillips, "the winter from hell" because of the influence of La Nina, reflecting significantly cooler water in the Pacific Ocean. "The girl-child is pretty ugly." Last year, a moderate El Nino or the boy child, with warmer ocean currents, influenced weather patterns and brought most of Canada — Saskatchewan being the exception — the warmest and driest winter on record.
Looking at 60 years of records for the last La Nina winters for Regina, 15 out of 19 were colder than normal and only four warmer. The majority also packed more snow.
But Phillips thinks it's premature to predict a brutal winter.
In the last 12 years, there have been four La Ninas, two of which have been warmer. "La Nina is traditionally going to bring you colder and snowier conditions. But there is something competing against La Nina. It could be global warming, it could be climate change, it could be sunspots, it could by cyclical. Who knows? But we know it is contradicting."
Phillips said winter will likely begin slow (in spite of this week), with warmer than normal temperatures in November for Saskatchewan and near normal precipitation. Come December, January and February, the temperatures will dip to below normal, and snowfall with vary across the province.
"I always say with our seasonal forecasting, the good news is that we're not always right, and we change our minds," he added.
Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.