The June forecast for Alberta is out and it's one to get giddy about

We welcome the official start of summer in June, and the forecast for Alberta is shaping up to be a pretty nice one.

We spoke with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) Warning Preparedness Meteorologist Alysa Pederson, who says Alberta is likely in for a pretty lovely June.

After parts of Alberta saw a snowflake-filled May long weekend just a short while ago, the temperature and precipitation outlooks for the province in June may be a sight for sore eyes.

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After a pretty cool spring, generally speaking, across the province, current models suggest that the trend will likely be above normal temperatures for Alberta in June.

Pederson cautioned that the signal is a bit weaker across northern B.C., the Yukon, and northern Alberta; however, when ECCC looks at the whole country, it’s a pretty strong signal that almost everywhere is going to be above normal in June.

“We’re only like a 50 to 60 per cent chance of above normal here, compared to 80 plus for the rest of the country. So, while I’m above normal, the confidence is slightly lower here than it is if you look elsewhere,” she added.

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When it comes to precipitation, June can see thunderstorm activity start to really kick up in Alberta, which leads to questions with the localized precipitation you can get ontologically speaking.

Pederson says the current trend that is being seen for Alberta leads to warmer-than-normal temperatures, and you typically see drier-than-normal conditions as well. There has been a relatively consistent signal over the last week or so in ECCC’s daily seasonal models for June, so there is decent confidence that precipitation will be potentially dry and normal across the month of June.

The drier-than-normal zone is essentially from the Edmonton to Calgary areas, particularly along the Foothills. There is one catch about trying to predict precipitation across the province.

“If we get any signal of what we call a ‘cold low,’ like a big June monsoon because it’s the wettest month of the year for places like Calgary and along the Foothills there because of these big systems that come in and in some cases can drop 150 plus millimetres of rain in the Foothills,” Pederson said.

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“So, if we get one of those, then that totally flips the script completely, even though it’s just one storm. So, for now, that’s kind of the indication that it’s going to be drier than normal, especially in that area. But one storm could totally blow that forecast out.”

The June monsoon style of systems that can drop 150 to 200 millimetres of rain is due to a low-pressure system that, instead of an Alberta Clipper, which develops and leaves the Rockies quickly and slides into the other Prairie provinces, tends to linger.

Pederson says in June, sometimes what we get in Alberta is that low-pressure system, it stalls somewhere in Montana, maybe even in Alberta, just in the lee of the Rocky Mountains. It sits there and continues to spin for a day or two, delivering that precipitation. Usually, the moisture feed from that comes all the way up from the Gulf of Mexico, and that’s why we can get those big rainfall events over typically a day or two before that system does move off, and so that’s kind of the difference of what causes those big rainfall events in June.

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Other things that should be top of mind for Albertans as we head into June are the severe weather risk increasing into the summer months and the increased impacts from potential heat events.

Having a way to get alerts when ECCC sends out severe thunderstorm or even tornado warnings is paramount, as is preparing oneself to not see impacts of things like heat illness during extended stretches of warmer temperatures.

Are you looking forward to how the June forecast for Alberta is shaping up? Let us know in the comments.