Summer snow in Calgary?

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Spoons

Regardless. I’ve lived in Calgary, Edmonton, and Lethbridge; and I’ve seen snow fall in every month of the year. Whether it accumulates or not doesn’t matter, IMHO; I’ve seen snow in all months of the year. In my experience, Alberta enjoys all four seasons, but sometimes they overlap.

I enjoyed a couple of seasons just today.

[Spoons]

@Shagnasty

None of that means that you shouldn’t send you kids to summer camp in New Hampshire…

New Hampshire in the summer! I spent a weekend “On Golden Pond,” and loved it. A beautiful state; I hope to return some time.

[Jonathan_Chance]

@Shagnasty

Why do you find that hard to believe? Calgary is pretty far North even for a Canadian city and its on a far inland prairie where unusual weather can take hold at any time. There are parts of the U.S. that make similar claims but those tend to be in the Mountain West.

Are more interesting question how far South can you go in North America to find a place with a similar claim? It can even snow in the summer in parts of Northern New England.

I’ll only throw down that I was in Lead/Deadwood, SD on August 2, 2010 and we got somewhere between 6-12 inches of a snow/ice mix on afternoon. It melted by dinnertime but damn that was something.

The locals just sort of shrugged it off.

[Raygun99]

@W0X0F

Actual data is shown for the last four years, but the extremes are for the whole period of record - 1884 to more or less now. (The normals are a 30-year average - either 1971-2000 or maybe they’re now using 1981-2010.)

Go to the customized search and you can get monthly almanac reports. As I mentioned, I found at least 12 August days with reported snow from the airport station (visionaries, those founding fathers, to build an airport in 1881…), and at least one more from the university station.

[Fish_Cheer]

Thanks for the input, everybody! I stand corrected; what an amazing city.

[Raygun99]

Just to give you a better feel for it (since it appears from your profile that you’re moving here or have just moved here) - Snow in August is like a 1 in 20 year thing, July, 1 in 30, June, 1 in 3.

[Colophon]

@Fish_Cheer

I grew up in Europe. It certainly does not snow in London, Cologne or Wroclaw in August; all three cities lie on or near the same parallel as Calgary. Is this all about the Gulf Stream?

Yup - Nice on the French Riviera is marginally further north than Toronto.

[Quartz]

Not quite London, but Hull had snow in August 2000, and London itself had snow in July 1888.

[Colophon]

@Quartz

Not quite London, but Hull had snow in August 2000, and London itself had snow in July 1888.

Not snow - hail, at least in the Hull example. The headline on that article is misleading - read on and it’s clear that it was hail.

I strongly suspect that the July 1888 event was also hail - see near the bottom of this page, for instance.

The latest date on which snow has definitely been recorded in lowland England is June 2, in 1975. (It famously stopped a cricket match in Derbyshire, and also fell during a match at Lord’s in London.)

[enipla]

@Shagnasty

Why do you find that hard to believe? Calgary is pretty far North even for a Canadian city and its on a far inland prairie where unusual weather can take hold at any time. There are parts of the U.S. that make similar claims but those tend to be in the Mountain West.

Your correct about the Mountain West. I’ve certainly seen snow in every month. The only times I’ve been snowed in have been Oct 10th, and April 19th.

[hogarth]

@Raygun99

One thing I’d note is that it doesn’t need to be below zero for there to be snowfall here - as noted above, it’s snowing here today, and the air temperature is about 5. Microbursts from the mountains are pretty frequent.

Right; my point was that snow sounded plausible, given those low temperatures.

@Gorsnak

Yeah, Saskatoon is further north and further from any moderating bodies of water than Calgary is, and there’s no way we’ve had snow on every day of the year.

I’d be surprised if Saskatoon hasn’t had snow in every month of the year, personally.

[Quercus]

@Shagnasty

Are more interesting question how far South can you go in North America to find a place with a similar claim? It can even snow in the summer in parts of Northern New England.

I think it depends on whether you require actual records. I’m sure there’s a peak in the California Sierras or southern Rockies that has seen snow at least once in the last, say, hundred years for each calendar day of the year, but I also bet nobody has been up there keeping records. Altitude is the biggie here.

[Gorsnak]

@hogarth

I’d be surprised if Saskatoon hasn’t had snow in every month of the year, personally.

Well, I just searched through the Environment Canada records for the reporting stations at the university and the airport, and I can’t find anything in August. July 18th, 1978 saw a trace of snow with a low temperature of 6.9C, but nothing in August since 1915 and that one record is all there is for July. There’s only a handful for June as well. 7 total records in the past century, all but 1 just a trace amount and the last a whole whopping 0.3cm.

[Dread_Pirate_Jimbo]

Another Calgarian chiming in to say I’ve seen snow in every month of the year. The weather here is extremely variable and unpredictable due to our proximity to the mountains, elevation, and location around the jet stream. I’ve heard it said by more than one meteorologist that Calgary is one of the hardest places on Earth to accurately predict the weather as a result of the uniqueness of the location. The old adage here (which one of the presenters on The Weather Network quoted me on this past weekend) is “If you don’t like the weather in Calgary, wait five minutes.”

My favourite crazy weather memory happened New Year’s of 1997-1998. On the afternoon of Dec 31, my friends and I were outside playing football in our tee shirts and shorts while the temperature topped out at a sunny 12.6 C. Then we went over to my best friend’s place to hang out and watch the ball drop on TV. By midnight, it was -8.4 C with freezing drizzle. By the time I left, around 1:00, it was down to -10.1 C and snowing. And by the following night we had dropped all the way to -21 C. So in the space of about 10 hours, we had dropped 22 degrees and gone from sunny to snowy. A full 33 degree drop in just over 24 hours.

Good times.