Get used to clear skies in the Prince Albert area and warm temperatures to go along with them. (Rob Mahon/paNOW Staff)

By Rob Mahon

What's this? Warmth?

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An unusually cold April is giving way to a warm start to May in the Prince Albert area, almost as if the weather is trying to make up for the late start to spring. And once it settles in, the warm weather is here for a while.

After not seeing it at any point in April, Prince Albert is going to spend much of the next week warmer than 20 C. It’s a quick turnaround as a new month begins, and a welcomed change.

“We do have a big upper ridge of high pressure that’s building all over western Canada,” said Terri Lang, regional meteorologist with Environment Canada. “We’ve already seen record breaking temperatures in British Columbia and Alberta. So that’s kind of making its way slowly eastward.”

Lang doesn’t expect many records to be broken in the Prince Albert area (the hottest recorded temperature on May 2, for instance, is 28.8 C) but it’s certainly going to be far warmer than the seasonal average, where the high is under 15 C.

“We’re running well above those averages,” Lang said. “We’ve waited a long time for these, though.”

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A long time, indeed. April was unseasonably cold almost all the way through, and March was colder than average before that. In fact, it’s normal for Prince Albert to see at least a couple of days in April similar to the ones we’ll see this week. This year, we got no such burst of warmth.

“The 30-year average says you get 2.2 days of 20 C or greater in the month of April,” said Lang. “On average, you’d have two per month and certainly those weren’t seen for you guys in the month of April. The warmest temperature you had was around 18.3 degrees on the April 28, so that’s the warmest you got.”

The coming stretch of warm weather will be worth the wait, however. In fact, the seven-day forecast shows no signs of the warm weather leaving, something Lang said is to be expected when it comes to ridges of high pressure.

“This warm spell is going to be here for the week,” Lang said. “The weather models are trying to figure out when they’re going to break down this big ridge. Once it gets established, it’s pretty hard to break down. We’ll have to figure out when that’s going to be, maybe after the weekend.”

Lang added a ridge of high pressure breaking down usually leads to a blast of wind and some thundershowers. She also said those showers would be welcome, because there will be extremely dry conditions for the rest of this week.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP