GP snow fall
© Jocelyn Turner / Daily Herald-TribuneOne unlucky cab driver had a less than ideal morning on Friday when he found himself stuck almost completely on top of a snow pile collected in the middle of Poplar Drive. Many of the city's residents found themselves battling the snowy conditions.
Though only two months into the winter season, Grande Prairie is already 22 centimetres of snow away from reaching the expected amount of snow it sees in a 12-month period, says Environment Canada.

In particular, the month of December thus far has seen the city close in on exactly half of the average snowfall it usually gets for an entire winter.

"In the month of November, it's reported that Grande Prairie got 55 cm and December, so far, 77 cm," said Dan Kulak, warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment Canada.

"The normal snowfall for the month of November is about 26 cm and for December is about 24 cm, so basically the city doubled that amount in November and pretty much tripled that amount for December."

According to Kulak, who's based out of Edmonton, while the normal amount of snow for the area in a year is approximately 154 cm and, with November and December combined, has already reached some-130 cm, the unusual numbers cannot be attributed to anything other than Old Man Winter.

"It's not that the season started any earlier than it usually does, but that it's been going very strong since it did start," Kulak said, noting that recent snowfalls are no indication that the city will get more or less, come the new year.

Flash freeze warnings in many northern areas across the province on Tuesday, however, were somewhat out of the ordinary, said Kulak.

Temperatures, which rose above freezing in the Grande Prairie region earlier in the week, melting some of the snow that fell overnight on Monday, were forecasted to drop rapidly by the early evening on Tuesday.

The sudden drop in temperature, caused by a cold front that moved in from the north, saw the melted snow refreeze. In a more significant instance, temperatures in Fort St. John fell 14 degrees in one hour behind the cold front, Kulak said.

"The fact that it's plus four during the noon hour in Grande Prairie and going to be minus 20-something by Tuesday evening is a bit unusual to have that big of a temperature drop in the winter during such a short period of time."