Winnipeggers got an unwelcome bit of wintry weather when snowfall touched down in the city on Monday.
However, a springtime snowfall is nothing new for Manitoba, which can see major storms throughout April and May.
“You think that snow kind of wraps up when we get to the spring and we start to move on to the warmer months,” said Christy Climenhaga, a scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).
“But we do tend to get good rounds of snow in March, April, we’ve even seen big dumps of snow in May in the Winnipeg area.”
Climenhaga noted that between 1990 and 2020, Winnipeg received an average of 13.6 centimetres (cm) of snow each April.
Some of the major weather events in recent years include 25 centimetres in a mid-April storm in 2022, and a 17 cm snowfall the year prior.
Other springtime snowfall events include the Portage la Prairie area being hit with 50 cm in one day in April 1966 and parts of Winnipeg getting 65 cm of snow in a single day in April 1997.
Climenhaga added that Winnipeg was hit with 29 cm of snow as late in the spring as May 11 in 2004.
“These big storms that drop quite a bit of snowfall fairly quickly do happen a little more often than you may think,” she said.
As for why Manitobans continue to see snow into the springtime, Climenhaga explained that spring is a transitional period. She said it’s a season with warmer air that can hold moisture, alongside temperatures below freezing in the atmosphere where the snow grows.
“The kind of combination—that clash of cooler air that’s been in place through the winter and starting to get this warmer, moist air moving in—you can see that snow start to grow really fast and drop really quickly,” she said.
Looking towards the rest of the spring, Climenhaga said though she doesn’t see another snowfall on the horizon, it’s best to stay prepared for anything.
“Looking more promising for not a lot of snowfall on the way, but things can change, and you can get these big storms that come up and just drop snow very fast,” she said. “So it’s something to keep in mind.”
