It's felt a little bit more like winter the past couple of days, but today (Sept 22nd) is the first official day of fall.

Environment Canada Meteorologist Dan Kulak says seeing snow at this time of the year is pretty typical in central Alberta.

“Long term stats from the Red Deer Airport show about 3 centimeters of snow is typical in the month of September and about 10 is typical in the month of October.  A lot of that does melt, but the later you get in the season, the less likely that is to happen”.

Kulak does have some insight into the next two seasons as we prepare for the cooler months.

“We actually have a slight probability of a La Niña developing this winter, that’s some of the latest information.  A La Niña typically gives a reasonably average fall but then in the winter time we tend to see conditions where we are cooler than normal and perhaps wetter than normal.  This is still a long ways out; the confidence is really not that great”.

After the summer we enjoyed, these past couple of days have been a bit of a shock to the system.

Kulak says there’s no denying, central Alberta received plenty of beach and bbq weather.

“For the Red Deer area, which is the location we have statistics for, for a long term, basically going back over 100 years to the early 1900’s, this past summer, which we define as June, July and August, came in as the 13th warmest, and the 21st driest, so a warm and dry summer”.

The sun returns tomorrow (Sept 23rd) and we’ll see more seasonal and above seasonal temperatures next week.