Southeastern Saskatchewan braces for a winter storm

People across southern Saskatchewan hope April snow showers also bring May flowers.

Winter storm watches were still in effect for the entire southeastern portion of the province, including Regina, on Tuesday morning.

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), anywhere from 10 to 25 centimetres of snow could fall on the Land of Living Skies.

In addition to heavy snow, strong northeasterly winds with gusts of 60 to 80 kilometres per hour are expected.

Saskatoon is not included in the most-recent sea of weather watches.

Meteorologist Rose Carlsen said weather warnings could be issued later Tuesday.

Carlsen also said there’s still a small chance that the precipitation will fall entirely as rain.

“Temperatures are going to be fairly mild. We’re expecting the precipitation to fall (Tuesday) mostly as rain, but we’re expecting it to change overnight to snow,” she added. “We’ll see snow (on Wednesday).”

Carlsen predicted there will be a wave of precipitation on Tuesday that will be less intense in nature.

“We’re expecting the heavier, more-treacherous precipitation to be moving into the province … early Wednesday morning, lasting through the day on Wednesday,” she said. “The heavier precipitation will be moving out early on Thursday and we’re expecting some lingering snow to just last through Thursday overnight into possibly even Friday morning.”

On Monday morning, a much larger area of the province covering almost all of southern and central Saskatchewan was under special weather statements, which were lifted Monday afternoon.

Only the southeastern corner of the province was under winter storm watches Tuesday morning.

Carlsen said that’s because Environment Canada had a higher level of confidence of where the storm will hit.

“Just because the areas west to the border of Alberta are not under a watch doesn’t mean they’re not going to get snow,” the meteorologist said. “We’re still expecting snow to fall outside the watch area, but not in such capacity that’s going to require any sort of bulletin.”

More information can be found on the Environment Canada alerts page.