The skies above Prince Albert took on an eerie grey colour as smoke drifted in from wildfires in the west. (Dawson Thompson/PANow Staff)

By Rob Mahon

Apocalyptic Skies

Smoky ‘ominous’ skies halt heat warning

Aug 16, 2021 | 2:30 PM

A heat wave that gripped Prince Albert this past weekend came to a sudden halt Monday morning as a shift in the wind blew in clouds and smoke from the west coast.

The original forecasted high for today was over 30 C, according to Environment Canada, but meteorologist Terri Lang said the smoky skies blocked out the sunlight and that forced temperatures to drop almost ten degrees cooler than expected.

“There’s too much cloud and there’s too much smoke around,” Lang said. “Essentially, the heat warning is pretty much done now. As well, the winds have shifted around to north, northwest. Those are usually a sign of cooler air moving in.”

Lang said the thick layer of smoke from British Columbia that cast a spooky almost apocalyptic grey light over the city is also responsible for the drop in degrees. During the day, the smoke blocks out the sun, which causes cooler temperatures than the city would otherwise have. At night, however, the effect shifts in the opposite direction.

“It actually does make it warmer because at night the earth radiates heat away,” Lang said. “It just usually goes up into space but if there’s cloud there or some smoke there, often it can trap the heat. So you actually get warmer evenings because of the cloud and the smoke.”

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The worst of the smoke in the air will begin to clear up as soon as this evening.

“The winds have shifted sharply to the northwest there,” said Lang. “The upper air pattern is also supposed to shift, so we are expecting that smoke to be out of the area and moving to the south probably by dinner time.”

As eerie as the strange skies may be in Northern Saskatchewan, Lang said we’re getting only a small sample of what the west coast is seeing.

“I was seeing videos yesterday from Vernon,” said Lang. “It was 4:30 in the afternoon and it was so black from the smoke that the street lights were coming on and the crickets were chirping.”

Lang added for the first time in a long time, the city will actually have temperatures below seasonal averages for the rest of the week.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP