Central Albertans can look forward to some warm temperatures in the coming days. Alysa Pederson, Warning Preparedness Meteorologist with Environment Canada says there’s a change in the jet stream that will mean warmer weather for our area.  

Considering extreme cold was in the forecast not too long ago, Pederson explains what is happening.  

“Last week, it was kind of what we call an upper ridge - which is what we're going to be under now - was over the West Coast in the Pacific. We were kind of in what we call a troughing pattern, so a ridge of high pressure at the surface of cold, cold, cold, cold Arctic air across Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan mostly and the territories of course.  

Now we’re getting a little bit of a shift. That jet stream is pretty strong off the West Coast of BC. They're getting an atmospheric river and a lot of moisture coming into the coast to BC. That's actually helping to push that into a ridge and bring warm air across Alberta into the weekend and then kind of peaking at the start of next week.” 

Those temperatures are believed to peak on Monday and Tuesday (January 29 and 30). Athough we might be close to record-breaking warmth, Pederson doesn’t believe we will see anything too out of the ordinary. The mild temperatures are not anything new for this area.  

“We were pretty warm last year as well. Our cold outbreaks like what we just had can easily be in December, January, or February with mild breaks in between normal for the Red Deer area for this month or with a high temperature of about –6. It's really just the average of our cold snaps and our warm outbreaks like this. So, it's not too uncommon,” she explained.  

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