Balmy no more: This week's cold snap will shock Alberta with a big chill

The Prairies Climate Change Project is a joint initiative between CBC Edmonton and CBC Saskatchewan that focuses on weather and our changing climate. Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga brings her expert voice to the conversation to help explain weather phenomena and climate change and how they impact everyday life.

Let's face it, this fall has been pretty easy on us.

On the Prairies, November did bring a sharp snap of cooler weather, but otherwise, balmy, above seasonal temperatures have dominated the forecast.

But this week, that is swiftly coming to an end. A push of Arctic air is moving into Western Canada, driving temperatures well below what is normal for this time of year.

Monday will bring temperatures in the minus double digits, a shock to the system for Albertansafter a relatively balmy fall. The cold will build from there. By Wednesday, most of Alberta will be in the 20s.

To put that in perspective, we should be seeing daily highs between 0 C and minus 3 C at this time of year.

And it looks like the cold snap will stick around and expand, with cooler than normal temperatures almost nationwide into the start of December.

Kyle Fougre, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, says this cold air is coming in behind a low pressure system.

"We're going to have winds coming from the north on the backside of the low that's going to drag in some Arctic air from the north across the province."

That low pressure system system will clear the region by Tuesday, bringing some snow to start the week, but the temperatures will continue to plummet.

"There's definitely a possibility that as the system moves through, we could see temperatures in the minus 30s by the end of the week," says Fougre.

Cold snaps at this time of the year are hardly out of the ordinary for Alberta, but this one will really stretch both in length and scope. By the start of December, much of Canada and parts of the United States will be on the cooler side.

"A lot of times when you do have this cold air that comes down from the North, it can stick around for quite a while," says Fougre.

"The cold air is very dense and so you know, once it gets pushed into the province, a lot of times it takes a very significant system to then displace that cold air."

Abrupt end to fall

Though this cold snap may not break records in the province, it is marking a big pattern change in our atmosphere, one that has been in place for much of the late summer and fall.

"What we've had going into these wintry conditions coming up is certainly one of the warmest summers ever. [It was] the third warmest summer in Canada," says David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

"We Canadians were basking in some of the warmest temperatures we've ever seen in the fall."

According to Phillips, Western Canada saw at least 500 warm temperature records fall between mid-August and mid-October.

In Edmonton, we saw our warmest August and October on record, and our third warmest September.

• Alberta's warm weather stretches into October, but how does this fall stack up?

But November did bring a preview of winter, with temperatures plummeting toward 30 C across Alberta early in the month. A big shift, but one that didn't last.

"It almost set us up to think that well, gee, will we cancel winter this year? Well, no, we never have. We are the second-coldest country in the world," says Phillips.Canada holds that spot behind Russia.

But the drastic swing in temperatures may make this particular cold snap pack an extra punch, even though daily temperature records may not fall.

"There's no seasonal getting used to it, acclimatizing yourself to it. It is really going from one extreme to the other."

Where does climate change fit in?

This is a question we hear every time the mercury plummets. What about climate change?

After all, frigid temperatures are the opposite of what we would expect in a warming world.

But Phillips says that this is where the important difference between climate and weather comes in weather being the short-term changes in atmospheric conditions, and climate being our long-term trends.

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Phillips says that with climate change, we will still have our Canadian winters.

"We're going to still be 'The Great White North.' We're still going to have ice, we're not going to be the Miami or Phoenix of the north."

Phillips says that with climate change, it all comes down to the likelihood of severe events happening, and long-term changes in what we consider normal.

"[Climate change] doesn't give us any new weather. It just gives us a different statistical kind of weather," he says.

"It makes the storms stormier or droughts 'droughtier' or heat waves longer and more intense."

And in the winter months, although it will likely mean less snow overall, we will still have our Canadian seasons.

"We're still going to have winters. They may be shorter; summers may be longer and more intense and winters will maybe have more rain than snow, but we'll still have snow."

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled "Our Changing Planet" to show and explain the effects of climate change. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.