(Submitted Photo/ Chris Knight)

By Ronald Quaroni

Weather Stats

“It was a pretty cold month for everybody”: Environment Canada releases April stats

May 4, 2020 | 12:32 PM

From winter gear to suntan lotion, residents in Saskatchewan rode April’s weather roller-coaster.

Despite a late warmup, cumulative cold days for the majority of last month left their mark.

“It was a pretty cold month for everybody, the entire province. Everybody came in with below-average temperatures,” meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, Terri Lang told paNOW. “I think if you ask anyone on the street they’d say, ‘yeah that April was not great.’”

It was so bad in fact, a number of Saskatchewan communities broke or were close to breaking all-time-record low’s for monthly mean temperatures.

Key Lake broke an all time record as it’s monthly mean temperatures was seven degrees colder than usual coming in at -8.9 C.

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Meadow Lake had the second coldest April on record with a near six degree difference at -2.7 C.

La Ronge got very close to breaking their all-time record, recording it’s third coldest April with a monthly mean temperature of -3.7 C.

North Battleford notched their sixth coldest April in 79 years of record keeping, while Prince Albert recorded it’s eighth coldest month in 133 years.

Environment and Climate Change Canada’s April 2020 statistics for a number of Saskatchewan communities.(Submitted Photo/Environment and Climate Change Canada)

Prince Albert also saw some very drastic temperature shifts. On April 3, the temperature bottomed out at -30.4 C and by April 30, the temperature topped out at 22.9 C, which is a 53.3 C temperature shift.

Looking ahead to the beginning of May, Lang noted temperatures will stay very close to normal, with a potential flurry forecast for the end of next weekend.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I also like to tell the truth,” she said. “It does look like towards the end of the weekend we are looking for some cold air to come from the Arctic. What that means, is we may see some snow again Sunday into Monday.”

Despite the potential snow, it appears overall that May should see slightly warmer than average according to Lang.

“It doesn’t mean that it’s not going to get cold. It doesn’t mean we don’t have the possibility of snow; it just means averaged out, it’ll be warmer,” she explained.

She finished by saying, with the snow melted and lots of brown grass, people should be careful of grassfires.

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Ron.quaroni@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @RonaldQuaroni