© Global NewsSnow blanketed Calgary on Friday.
Calgarians found themselves navigating a nasty drive home on Friday as a band of snow blanketed the region.
Snowfall warnings were issued around 5 p.m. for Calgary, and areas north, east and south of the city. That warning stayed in place until early Saturday morning.
Environment Canada said Saturday that
13.2 cm of snow fell on Friday, which marks a new snowfall record for Nov. 23. The previous record was set in 1942 when 9.4 cm of snow fell.
November is normally the third snowiest month of the year with an average of 16.6 cm of snow over the 30 days. This year, Calgary has experienced a higher-than-average amount of snow for the month, already sitting at 23.7 cm as of Nov. 23.
This comes on the heels of a historically wet October that brought
nearly five times the average amount of snow, ending the month with 48.4 cm of snow.
According to Environment Canada historical data,
there has been a notable uptick of days with heavy accumulations of snow this year. Calgary will usually see one to two days with snowfall accumulations of at least 10 cm throughout the year; so far in 2018, there have been four days with over 10 cm of snow, one each in February, March, October and November.
Comment: It looks very likely that the forecast made on the 29th of November for 5 feet of snow to have fallen over the area in the past 3 days (and before the weekend) will actually happen. Perhaps more tellingly this is also before meteorological winter officially starts on the 1st of December (Saturday).