Josh Classen's forecast: Big cooldown begins this weekend

An aerial image of Edmonton's Walterdale and High Level Bridges over the North Saskatchewan River the morning of Nov. 13, 2024. (Cam Wiebe / CTV News Edmonton)

Temperatures will be close to record highs across much of central and north-central Alberta again today.

A dozen record highs were set in Alberta on Thursday, including at the Edmonton International Airport. The main Edmonton weather station at Blatchford hit 14.3 C, just short of the record of 15.0 C from 1949. You can find all of Thursday's record highs here.

Today's record high for Edmonton is 19.5 C (set in 2016). I think we'll come up short of that record again, but a few other spots could set records this afternoon.

We'll get to around 16 C in the city today, under mainly sunny skies.

After today, the warm spell is over. Daytime highs will drop more than 10 C from today through the weekend.

Temperatures will remain above average through the weekend and into Remembrance Day on Monday.

But...that's mostly just because the average high for Nov. 9-11 is in the 1-2 C range.

AND...it looks VERY likely that we'll get some precipitation on Saturday.

Showers could move into the Edmonton area just after midnight tonight and we'll be cloudy with occasional showers throughout the day Saturday.

It may not rain steadily over your neighbourhood all day, but there will probably be showers somewhere in the Edmonton area for most or all of Saturday.

THEN...we might see a flip to some wet flurries in the evening.

Temperatures aren't expected to move much through the day and we may actually be cooler in the mid-to-late afternoon hours than the early morning hours.

The precipitation moves out of the Edmonton area late Saturday night and we'll get some clearing for Sunday.

Monday looks dry and mild.

Temperatures Sunday and Monday morning will probably start out a few degrees below 0 C in the morning and then climb to the 5 C range in the afternoon.

Looking ahead to the rest of next week: We're expecting daytime highs just slightly above 0 C for Tuesday/Wednesday and just slightly below 0 C for the end of the week.

Here's the forecast for Edmonton and area:

Today - Mainly sunny

High: 16

Tonight - A few clouds this evening.

Increasing cloud overnight with a 40% chance of showers after midnight.

9pm: 8

Saturday - Cloudy with occasional showers. 40% chance of wet flurries in the evening.

Temperature holding steady through the day.

Morning Low: 3

Afternoon High: 4

Sunday - Morning clouds. Clearing in the afternoon.

Morning Low: -2

Afternoon High: 4

Monday - Partly cloudy.

Morning Low: -3

Afternoon High: 6

Tuesday - Partly cloudy.

Morning Low: -3

Afternoon High: 2

Wednesday - Mix of sun & cloud.

Morning Low: -5

Afternoon High: 3