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A province known for being green is expected to be white for the holidays.
“I’m going to bet a couple loonies that you’re going to clearly have a white Christmas,” Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said Friday.
The forecast calls for periods of snow for both Saskatoon and Regina on Tuesday, just a couple days before Santa Claus arrives.
Phillips said temperatures are going to get a little cooler but still will be above normal, describing them as “comfortable.” Expect lots of sunshine too.
While Phillips looked ahead to Christmas, he also looked back on the year and revealed his top weather stories of 2020.
At No. 5 was the snowstorm in St. John’s, N.L. Environment Canada recorded some areas receiving 90 centimetres, or close to three feet, of snow.
What Phillips called the endless summer in the east came in at No. 4.
The top three all happened in the west.
No. 3 was the flooding in Fort McMurray, Alta.
“Ice was very thick on those rivers in Fort McMurray and then nature tried to get rid of it all at once. You couldn’t even use dynamite to blow it away. Twenty per cent of the population had to be evacuated,” Phillips said.
Smoke in B.C. from wildfires on the U.S. west coast took the No. 2 spot.
“Some of that smoke came into Saskatchewan. I know you had sometimes that blood-red sunset,” he said.
Phillips’ top weather story of the year was one that lasted only 11 minutes. But the damage it did to Calgary was historic.
Causing more than $1 billion worth of damage after tennis ball-sized hail fell, Phillips said the June event is the most expensive hailstorm ever in Canada.
“There were 34,000 cars written off,” he said. “That’s more cars (than) they sell in the province of Alberta in a year.”
The accompanying rain left other vehicles almost completely submerged under water. Windshields were spider webs of cracks and some homes had siding and shingles ripped off like a band-aid.
“Backyard vegetable gardens were coleslaw,” Phillips said.
See the full list of the top weather stories here.
