Coldest air temperature recorded at this location

On January 13 and 14, 2024 my weather station located in Didsbury, Alberta within the Rosebud Creek valley, Valarosa Crossing neighbourhood, recorded the lowest air temperatures of -40° Celsius. This has been the lowest ever recorded by my weather station since installation back in August 2012. Previous record was -39° Celsius back on February 7, 2021.


The weather station has struggled to transmit data during these extreme cold hours in darkness. The backup lithium batteries, that keep the system running when the solar panels cannot power it, are only a year and half old, but maybe the solar panel batteries have lost some of their power and therefore cause the backup batteries to be used more. New batteries will be installed soon.

Tornado 6km south of Didsbury

July 1 often has a big storm and this year was not any different although this year was the worst. I had some golf ball hail and a tornado that touched down 6km south of my location which left a few farmyards destroyed.
A few photos from what I saw from my place and then near the ground zero area.
Thankfully at this time no reported injuries!

Tornado funnel seen from Didsbury
Golf ball size hail hitting the water
Railway grain car in middle of field. Brown path above was tornado path.
Unlucky weather station, got hit with golf ball hail.

No other damage been found. Few years back hail broke the anemometer sensor on July 1.

One hot summer!

Counted up the number of days my weather station recorded 29C and above for the day high.  Sure a lot of them this summer.

# of Summer days 29C and above

2021* – 26

2020 – 7

2019 – 4

2018 – 10

*June 1 to August 15,2021

February 2019 was cold!

Felt like Feb 2019 was cold, it was!

Olds Alberta Historic Weather Data 1916 to 2019

This Year Avg Feb -19.7C
103 year Avg Feb -8.5C

This Year Avg Jan/Feb -11.9C
103 year Avg Jan/Feb -9.6C

Avg Feb, 2nd coldest last 103 yrs
Avg Jan/Feb, 22nd coldest in last 103 yrs

So yes, brrr!

July 1, 2018 Timelapse Storm

 

July 1, 2016 Timelapse Storm

Canada Day Supercell Storm from JEZVideo on Vimeo.

July 2,2015 – drought report

June wasn’t our monsoon season that we often have.  With only 50.5mm of rainfall record and of that 50mm, 20mm was a localized 1 hour downpour.  Same storm but just 2km north received 20mm less rain during that storm. That weather station only recorded 27.2mm of rainfall for June.

Start conserving water.  Going to be a dry summer. I’m surprised we don’t have any water restriction yet.

http://www.drought.gov/nadm-media/nadm/nadm-201505.jpg

June 1, 2015 – Where is the rain?

Historically, at least since I’ve lived in Central Alberta, the end of May and early June is usually wet.  Here is looking back at the records I’ve measured:

Year  May  June  July
2005 21mm  158mm 53mm
2006 57mm  87mm 37mm
2007 102mm  101mm 21mm
2008 90mm  100mm 67mm
2009 5mm  37mm 51mm
2010 49mm  77mm 63mm
2011 75mm  102mm 49mm
2012 75mm  116mm 102mm
2013 87mm  132mm 31mm
2014 73mm  152mm 27mm
2015 31mm  ?mm ?mm

Few graphs showing the data: (click to enlarge)

RainFall2005-2015-Graph1

RainFall2005-2015-Graph2

RainFall2005-2015-Graph3

 

My predictions: Going to be a dry summer.  Maybe 70-90mm for June?

Interesting that since 2009 our June rainfall total has continue to rise each year by 20mm or more.  Is that due to more cloud seeding?

Warm Winter

Couple of website for historic data view that I’ve been using for a while and thought I would pass them along to you.

 

Data for graphs below were provided from Alberta AgroClimatic Information Services.

Click on image to enlarge.

The average temperature this past winter has been a good couple degrees warmer than the historic average.

Looking at the lowest temperatures…

 

July 4, 2011 – Didsbury Storm clouds

Storm that blew through Didsbury on July 4, 2011.  15mm of rain and a couple very small hail stones spotted on the deck.