Residents across the province might have been surprised to look out their windows yesterday and see white stuff flying around.
Temperatures plummeted throughout the day in Edmonton, hovering just above freezing by the evening, shocking residents who enjoyed a high of 21 degrees on Monday.
But only Peace River was unlucky enough to see snow actually accumulate on the ground. Around 3 cm piled up throughout the day, said Ralph Bigio, a meteorologist for Environment Canada.
May 14, 1986: A spring blizzard with winds up to 80 km/h surprised residents of southern and central Alberta. In Calgary, 500 homes were without power for up to a week. Telephone service was also interrupted when more than 2,300 telephone poles were downed across the province. The Alberta government asked the public to make as few phone calls as possible.
May 13/14 1986 was one of Alberta's memorable storms. 24C during the day, it started to drop and rain in the early evening. By 9pm it was hail, and that dropped the temperature significantly. By 11:30 it was snowing, and by 6am we were drifted into the house and couldn't escape. We got slightly over 3 feet of snow over a 6 hour period, plus the high winds causing aforementioned drifting: it was the only time I've seen the front door blocked with snow. Three days later it was in the 20s again.
Here's the month of May, 1986 in weather history. If you really want freaky, look at May 1987 where Alberta again got a mid-May snowfall on the 18th. We thought an ice age was coming! (Al Gore having not been invented yet)
