Forecasting the Unpredictable: Alberta’s Wild Weather

When it comes to weather in Western Canada, unpredictability is the only constant! 

Kara Mastel sits down with veteran meteorologist David Spence to unpack Alberta’s wild 2025 weather—from early-season heat waves to record July rainfall. 

They explore shifting patterns that challenge old expectations, the “new normal” for drought and storms, and how AI is reshaping weather forecasting. 

Along the way, David shares insight on regional extremes, the delicate dance of rain and irrigation for agriculture, and what farmers might expect as summer winds down. 

Listen For:

3:45 Alberta’s weather in 2025—rain here, drought there

7:20 The “seasonal flip” that turned May hot and July wet

9:35 When drought stops being unusual and becomes the new normal

14:28 Will summer stretch into October? What fall could look like

21:24 How AI is reshaping the future of weather forecasting

GUEST: David Spence, retired Chief Meteorologist for CTV

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Chapters

• 3:45 Alberta’s weather in 2025—rain here, drought there
• 7:20 The “seasonal flip” that turned May hot and July wet
• 9:35 When drought stops being unusual and becomes the new normal
• 14:28 Will summer stretch into October? What fall could look like
• 21:24 How AI is reshaping the future of weather forecasting

Transcript

Kara Mastel (00:10):

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Bovine Podcast, brought to you by Alberta Beef Producers. I'm your host, Kara Mastel, and as always, so happy to be here. Today we're diving into a topic that's been on everyone's radar, and with the nature of the agricultural industry, likely we'll never actually leave our radar. And yes, if you guess the weather, you are correct from scorching heat to sudden storms. Western Canada has seen it all this year and maybe in different orders than we usually expect, and Alberta has been right in the thick of it. Joining me today is someone who knows the skies well, David Spence, who's a veteran meteorologist and contributor with Rural Roots Canada. David's here to help us unpack the trends, the science, and what we might expect as we head into the final stretch of summer. Thanks for joining me on the bovine today. David, to start out, how about you? Tell me a bit about yourself?

David Spence (01:10):

Alright, well, for the last 40 years or so, I've been in broadcasting and for most of that time, weather broadcasting and was with CQB Calgary from about 1981 to 2021, not steadily. I left for a couple of years, so 38 of 40 years I was there, and for most of that time I did weather on television. I became a meteorologist in 2004, so the last 20 years or so of my tenure there was as a meteorologist and I retired in 2021. I thought the time had come to pass it along to somebody else. I don't want to be too greedy. I think 40 years is probably enough. I loved the Jo. I loved it until the very last day, but I knew it was time to go and I do not regret making that move at all. A lot of exciting things have happened since then.

(02:05):

I'm now doing weather for rural Roots canada.com and in conjunction with that, we're on nine different radio stations across Alberta, parts of British Columbia, Saskatchewan. So it's busy work, but it's part-time work and it fits in very well with my retirement lifestyle. I'm also doing some work in healthcare of all things. After I was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in 2012, I thought I've got to give back to the healthcare world, to the cancer system. And in 2018, I signed on as a patient and family advisor with a HS and one thing led to another. Now I'm on a couple of provincial committees with them and I'm doing some work with the University of Calgary and with Nate starting a new project with Nate in the fall. So between weather for agriculture and cancer care, it's pretty busy retirement.

Kara Mastel (03:04):

Yeah, very interesting and nice. You can be able to give back in that way. I know I definitely used to watch you regularly on the tv. I'm a state grad from the broadcasting program and I considered meteorology for a while, but it's a great program and it's a great

David Spence (03:21):

Industry. They have a great program at SAT and some very talented people running it. Unfortunately, I guess the broadcast news program has come to an end, but they're still doing at least another year as far as I know, of other forms of broadcasting and digital work. So yeah, there's very, very talented people at Satan. They're turning notes and very, very good students. Yeah.

Kara Mastel (03:45):

Okay. We're obviously here today to talk about weather. Let's start with the big picture here and then maybe we can move into more what the province of Alberta specifically looks like. How has the weather across Western Canada shaped up so far in 2025?

David Spence (03:59):

Wow, what question? It depends where you are.

(04:04):

Some areas have had too much rain, A lot of areas have had not enough. Some areas have had too much heat, some areas have had not enough basically to boil it down, to simplify things. If you go from west to east, from Alberta to Manitoba across the prairies, the farther east you go, the drier it is, the farther west you go, the wetter it is. Alberta's had an abundance of rainfall in central regions. I'm there now. I'm at Pigeon Lake right now in Central Alberta, which has had tremendous rainfall. And you can just tell by looking at the fields, the crops and how they've grown, how they've matured, how they've blossomed. It's all a very healthy looking thing, yet you drive two hours south down the road into southern Alberta where there has been the scarcity of rainfall and it's a whole different story. And in northern Alberta as well, east of Edmonton, just heard from a farmer east of Edmonton just the other day. It was pretty much ready to give up. They had not enough rain this season and then this week that we're recording this turned out to be hot and dry and they said that's it. They're pretty much ready to give up upon the season. And that's just Alberta. Similar situation in Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well. Central parts of Saskatchewan have had pretty good rainfall, not as much as Alberta and in Manitoba, southern Manitoba, they're struggling with drought.

Kara Mastel (05:27):

Yeah, it's amazing. I know just anecdotally from one of our A BP delegates are talking about how one side, he's in north central Alberta and one side of his operation is too wet and one side of it is too dry. It's crazy how spotty it's been this year.

David Spence (05:45):

Yeah, it is. And when we get rain in Alberta, it comes in one of two ways in the summertime, either comes from storm systems that move in to our south, they plant themselves in Montana and shoot rain up into southern Alberta, or you get a system to the north of us that drags a cold front across the province. And in those cases this year, we've had those cold fronts going through Central Alberta giving a lot of rain, and we've had those lows in Montana also pushing rain into central Alberta. So they've received rain from both sources, whereas other parts of the province have received very little rain at all.

Kara Mastel (06:24):

Yeah, I know. I'm in southeastern Alberta just west of medicine hat, and I mean, traditionally we were in a very drought zone and I mean yes, it has been a very dry here, but July has been the wettest I've seen in a long time. It's been kind of a crazy year.

David Spence (06:41):

Yeah, July has been a very wet month. I mean, we had heat back in May, early June. It looked like we were headed for another disasters drought, and in fact, the drought monitor up until the end of June has been indicating pretty much that. But then July came along and the rain started to fall and fall and fall. Many areas have doubled. The normal July rainfall we're not technically through July just yet. By the time we were halfway through July, there were many areas in central Alberta in particular that had already received an entire month's worth of rain and it continued to run after that. So yeah, it's been very, very spotty.

Kara Mastel (07:20):

I've heard some talk that we maybe had a bit of a seasonal flip earlier this year. Would you say that's kind of what happened when you're talking about that heat that came in May?

David Spence (07:32):

Yes and no. I mean, I guess it's a flip according to expectations. You expect July and August to be the hot dry months. You expect May and June to be the wet months and maybe not quite as hot. And it happened this year. The flip if you will, happened this year where Maye and June were hot and July turned wet and August is still to come. So we'll see how that turns out. But I don't know if that's a flip or if that's turning into a new normal because we've had a warm dry springs for the past few years, although we haven't had mainly rainy weather in the summer months. So to that extent, sure, perhaps it could be considered a flip, but I have noticed for sure that earlier in the season, the heat seems to be coming earlier in the season along with the dry weather. And I think that's what we saw this year,

Kara Mastel (08:26):

Which is unfortunately not great in the agricultural industry as we try to get things established early on in the spring.

David Spence (08:33):

Yeah, I mean that's when you need the rain, right, for seeding and then for germination and yeah, the timing is really, really bad. I spoke at a conference farming smarter conference in Lethbridge in February, and I showed some maps and showed some expectations of what the year was supposed to be like, and at that time it looked like May and June would be quite wet. So I said that at the conference and then me and June came along and it wasn't wet, and I'm thinking, wow, was I ever wrong? But then July came along and as you say, flipped and it turned wet. So the rainfall has been there, the timing has been off.

Kara Mastel (09:12):

And it's interesting, I think that you bring up the whole new normal idea because I've had this thought a lot lately. It seems like year after year, like I said, we're in a drought zone and year after year we're like, okay, we're set up for another drought year, we're set up for another drought year. But at what point does it no longer become okay, we're set up for a drought year and this is just what conditions are now.

David Spence (09:35):

Yeah, I think we have to manage our expectations, maybe even change our expectations altogether from looking forward to wet weather in May and June and then drier weather in the summer. That is no longer the pattern necessarily. I mean, we've seen so many changes in the weather patterns, especially in the last decade or two, that you can no longer rely on spring rain, you can no longer rely on summer sunshine and dry weather. For years and years and years, we would have dry winters and the newspapers on or about the 1st of March, they would run these big headlines, drought is on the way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's looking awful. It was very pessimistic stories. And then April would come along and the rain would start in May and June and the rain would start. And those stories looked ridiculous at that time, but now they might not look so ridiculous anymore because like I say, I don't think we can count on springs being wet, and I don't think we can count on summers being dry.

Kara Mastel (10:38):

Yeah, it's weather and it's continuously changing. And I mean, speaking of that, we've had some intense weather recently. I know parts of Alberta specifically, if you look at ton area, that southwestern part of Alberta, they were just hit with some huge storms. Do you want to talk about some of the storms we've seen so far this year and extreme weather events?

David Spence (11:04):

To be honest with you, I don't think it's anything all that unusual. We've had a number of thunderstorms. There has been some hail damage as there always is with these storms. But I just don't see anything this summer in terms of severity of the storms. That has been unusual. In fact, I believe I checked last week before coming out here to Pigeon Lake on the tornado numbers. And the tornado numbers for Alberta are not all that impressive this year. It seems to be down compared to recent years. So I am hesitant to say there's been a spike in severe weather. I don't think there has been. Thunderstorms are very, very normal. In the summertime, what we have perhaps seen is increased rainfall coming out of these thunder storms. Thunderstorms are very isolated systems. They're very small and quite often they'll go by fast drop maybe a millimeter or two of rain and then move on.

(11:58):

But this year some of the storms have been slower moving and it produced heavier rain. And I think that might be the biggest difference compared to what we would normally see. But in terms of the number of storms, in terms of the number of severe storms, there have been a lot. But that's to be expected. And especially in July, the first half of August, actually probably the second half of June, all the way to the first half of August, these storms are at their most active stage. Once you hit August 15th, they start to settle down.

Kara Mastel (12:32):

So is that due to a lack of heat? Maybe that we've had less, I mean, I know I've seen plenty of people in Calgary writing. Okay. When is summer actually going to begin here? Is that maybe bringing down the thunderstorm numbers or not so much?

David Spence (12:52):

It's complicated.

(12:55):

Thunderstorms, beget thunderstorms. So if you have a rainy period, all that moisture from the rains, Eva soaks into the ground, soaks into the vegetation, and then evaporates back into the air, and then it kicks off another round of showers and thunderstorms. So the rain we had in July, all that rain is still parked in the ground, still parked in the vegetation, and it's going to continue to generate some storms and some thunderstorms more frequently perhaps than one would expect through August. But yes, we haven't had any serious heat, I don't think, in the month of July. Certainly not since June. So that does tend to suppress the development of storms. That said, we have had systems coming through cold fronts from the north and systems in Montana that have generated some rain and some storms in southern Alberta. And those kinds of storms, it really doesn't have anything to do with heat and evaporation and that sort of thing. So like I said, it's kind of complicated the types of thunderstorms you get, the way they originate. Yes, they haven't been originating by heat, but they have been developing for other reasons.

Kara Mastel (14:09):

So looking ahead to the rest of the summer, I mean, I know weather and it's different than climate. It is really, really volatile. But looking ahead, any ideas of what the rest of the summer could look like?

David Spence (14:24):

Wow, that's

Kara Mastel (14:26):

Another loaded question.

David Spence (14:28):

Yeah, it really is. Weather forecasting is pretty good for three days. It's okay for five days and beyond five days you're almost rolling dice, but you can't pick out some trends. And I think as I mentioned, with all the moisture that we've received in certain parts of Alberta during the month of July, that moisture is going to recycle back into the atmosphere, into the sky, it's going to evaporate, there'll be evapotranspiration from the vegetation, and that will likely kick off maybe a more active thunderstorm season for the first half of August than we would normally see. And not just thunderstorms, I mean showers as well, but that applies again to areas that are received abundant rainfall. And we have not had abundant rainfall in southeastern Alberta. We've not had abundant rainfall in central Alberta. The Lakeland up into the peace country, it's been pretty quiet in terms of precipitation. So those areas will likely stay dry. Basically, it's an embarrassment of riches. Areas where it has rained, it will likely rain some more areas where it's been dry will likely stay dry.

Kara Mastel (15:33):

Any indicators pointing to in early fall or extended summer heat through September and October?

David Spence (15:40):

Well, that's another thing. We've seen springs over the past few years becoming hotter and drier. We've also seen fall almost disappear. I mean, in the past few years we've gone from summer like weather to winter weather with a very, very short transition. And whether that continues this year is anybody's guess really. But it is a pattern that I've noticed, at least in Alberta that falls or the autumn season seems to be getting much, much shorter because the warmer weather of summer is lasting longer into September. I mean, I would suspect we'll have summer weather until the end of September, and then it will maybe be a week or two of fallish kind of weather, and then boom, here comes the snow for Halloween. So I think that is a trend we've seen in recent years, and I expect that will happen this year as well.

Kara Mastel (16:33):

And then all of a sudden it seems like Christmas rolls around and trees outside are starting to butt again. It's been confusing.

David Spence (16:45):

And in southwestern Alberta especially where you get chinooks, the trees get confused a lot. You'll have a 15 degree day in January or February, and if there are two or three of those in a row, sure, they'll start putting out buds. They think it's spring again, and then you get the minus 30 coming along. Do those buds die right on the branch and the tree's injured. So I think that's one reason why southern Alberta is a grassland. The trees is just not an actual environment for healthy tree growth.

Kara Mastel (17:10):

No, and also you just need water too to make 'em grow.

David Spence (17:15):

Yeah, exactly that too. I've often said that in my family's history, a couple of generations ago, my family homesteaded in Alberta from Scotland, and back then they were offering free land, come to Canada, come to Alberta, free land, they'll have a bunch acres, grow a farm, you'll get rich. And I really think they were sold a bill of goods when it came to coming to Alberta because we're a semi ait climate. And they found it very, very difficult to get things started. I mean, we're talking the 18 hundreds here where they didn't have the technologies or the irrigation systems that they have now. My family homesteaded near Edmonton or wasn't really near Edmonton at the time. Edmonton was much smaller. It was quite a distance from Edmonton. And now that land is part of the Anthony Henday Drive Ring Road around the city of Edmonton. But I think back in the day, I think they might've been a little bit misled as to the nature of Alberta's climate and what can and cannot grow here.

Kara Mastel (18:18):

Yeah, absolutely. And like you say, without some of our irrigation technologies and stuff, even where I live, we would not be able to do what we do without irrigation.

David Spence (18:30):

And it's so important for people in the south who rely on irrigation. It's so important for the rain to fall on the foothills to feed those rivers and to get the water flowing. And fortunately this year, the foothills has been an area where there has been substantial rainfall and it's been good for the irrigation systems.

Kara Mastel (18:51):

And then we start looking at November, December and we start tracking snow pack hoping the mountains get some snow for us as well.

David Spence (18:59):

Yes, yes. And then I think that might've been a concern earlier in the season because mountains didn't get their average snowfall over the winter this year. So the rain, I think, has saved a lot of farms.

Kara Mastel (19:10):

Well, and it brings back the conversation again though, on average snow pack, like we say every year, okay, it's below average. It's below average, but then at what point does that average just become the average?

David Spence (19:23):

Right, yes. And in terms of what, I'm not sure how they do it for STO Pak actually, but in terms of whether averages are recalculated every 30 years, so we just got a new set of averages actually calculated up to 2010, and then another set of averages will be calculated in 2040.

Kara Mastel (19:44):

Do you use any specific technology when it comes to tracking the weather and what you're looking at?

David Spence (19:52):

Oh, yes, we do. And I still use the technology with my work at Rural Roots Canada, so I'm still well versed in what's going on with weather modeling and that sort of thing. But yes, we rely very heavily on weather models, very excited about some of the new ones that are incorporating AI into weather forecasting. I've been very, very skeptical about AI ever since it started becoming a thing. But in weather forecasting, it's actually turned out to be working fairly well. It's very early stage ai. It needs to be refined, it needs to be fine tuned, but some of the forecasts that the AI models are putting out are actually turning out pretty good, and we can't ignore them anymore. We have to pay attention to them. But yes, there are, oh, I usually use about 10 different weather models that I've used over the years order to make a forecast in order to determine what's coming up with the weather. Canadian models, American models, British German, Japanese models. They're all very useful in putting together the puzzle. And that's what it is really. They're all pieces in a puzzle, and you take all these pieces and you try to put it all together to make a weather forecast. That's the way I've been doing it for decades, and that's the way I'll continue doing it. But I know that there's technology coming up, particularly AI technology that's going to make my methods obsolete. And I think pretty quickly

Kara Mastel (21:24):

When looking at some of these AI technologies, I mean, I know it seems to be the conversation we're having in every single industry. You can talk to anyone and you're going, okay, I think we have to actually acknowledge that we need to adopt some of this AI stuff because it's working. But in the meteorology world, what is it doing? Is it overlaying some of these different models and stuff, or how are you guys using it?

David Spence (21:52):

They're producing models of their own. So we have traditional models. They run about four times a day, and it takes hours for them to put a forecast together. So data is collected, let's say at 6:00 AM six o'clock in the morning, it's fed into the computer models, and then by noon, you're going to get some forecasting out of those computer models. It takes a third of a day for a model to come up with a forecast. AI does it in seconds, and it does it several times an hour, nevermind once every four hours. It does it as many times an hour as you want it to. I'm not absolutely sure what their program to do now, but constantly updating. They're taking the weather information from observations, information on temperature, precipitation, humidity, that sort of thing, and feeding it into their models constantly. And it's continuing to churn out updated forecasts, and they're becoming really, really, really good.

(22:57):

The European Center for Medium Range weather forecasting, the E-C-M-W-F has been pioneering AI technology in weather forecasting. And when it first came out, it wasn't all that great, but now it's just fantastic and it's only going to get better as the model become more refined and continued to churn out these updated forecasts on an almost magical level. Just the speed and the accuracy is only going to get better and better and better. And I think we're going to see probably either the traditional weather models are going to have to adapt or they're just going to disappear. And both the Canadian and US weather agencies environment, Canada National Weather Service, are working on AI models of their own, and they have to keep up.

Kara Mastel (23:45):

Yeah, that's incredible. And yeah, you got to keep up. Or like you said, all of a sudden you become obsolete. And it's unfortunate, but it's where everything's going.

David Spence (23:55):

Yes. And the other piece to that equation is funding because whether agencies are funded by governments and your government has to have the will to fund this stuff, and there's just so much going on in the world now that's taking attention away from this that things like these weather models may get left behind a little bit. So it's going to be a struggle, I think.

Kara Mastel (24:19):

Yeah. Anything else you would like to maybe tell to somebody that might be listening or anything you think we missed?

David Spence (24:27):

No, other than even with AI coming along and doing so well, weather is never going to be an exact science. We're never going to be able to predict it perfectly and don't shoot the messenger. We're human. We do make mistakes, and we always will make mistakes, but we are so much better at it than we were when I started doing this 40 years ago, and that improvement will continue. But yeah, hedge your bets just because David Spence or somebody else says winter is going to be snowy and will be set up nicely for the spring, don't believe it. I mean, nature has its way of making its own changes, and nature has its way of throwing a good forecast out in the trash and having to make us start all over again. So don't expect perfection from us, but yes, we're getting better than we once did.

Kara Mastel (25:26):

Wow. And in all honesty, I mean, anyone that says they, I mean, how many times have I sat out on my deck and you've watched clouds come in and you go, oh my goodness, this is going to come form into something, and then it breaks apart. It happens.

David Spence (25:44):

Yeah. I mean, that happened yesterday. My daughter in Calgary was texting me saying, big clouds, big clouds is going to be storms, and no, there won't be any storms. And she was very skeptical. She didn't think I knew what I was talking about, but it turned out, just like you said, the clouds collapsed and nothing happened.

Kara Mastel (26:02):

Dad, you don't know what you're talking about. You've only been doing this for the last 40 years.

David Spence (26:08):

Oh, well, you do. How many times I heard that.

Kara Mastel (26:11):

Oh, that's funny. Okay. Well, I appreciate your insight very much. I know you guys have on railroads Canada, you put out a weekly weather report. Is that correct?

David Spence (26:20):

Yes. Every Sunday I work on the forecast when it's posted, Monday mornings at seven 15 ish, something like that. And also on Mondays we're doing weekly weather outlooks on nine radio stations. Again, as I mentioned, across Alberta, BC or Northeastern BC and parts of Saskatchewan. Then I do an update on Thursdays.

Kara Mastel (26:45):

Awesome. And they can find that by going to railroads canada.com,

David Spence (26:50):

Correct? Yes. Perfect. It's a great website. There's a lot of agriculture oriented news on it. It's not just a weather website. There's stuff there for everyone. All topics are covered, and I really like the way they give shout outs to some of the people who are achieving great things in prairie farms or prairie farming in Canada.

Kara Mastel (27:11):

Absolutely. Okay. Thank you very much for your time, David, and hopefully, I guess the areas that need the sun, get the sun and the areas that need the rain, get the rain.

David Spence (27:20):

Yeah. So sorry for parts of Alberta that have missed out on what is, as I say, been an embarrassment of riches in central Alberta.

Kara Mastel (27:39):

Thanks again for tuning into another episode of the Bovine podcast. So I do have some bittersweet news to share with you. The Bovine podcast is going to take a bit of a pause after this episode as I personally shift into a new role for a while, which is the role of motherhood. I will be on parental leave for the next year. I'm going to be learning how to take care of a different mammal than usual, which is a human, and I'm very excited for this next stage of life. But I'm definitely going to be sad to be stepping away from a BP for a while. However, you will be left in great hands. The team in a BP will be playing it by ear as to what the future of the bovine looks like going forward and what direction we take from here. However, we are really happy to receive feedback.

(28:33):

So if there's anything you want to say about the bovine, good, bad, ugly, anything, please send it forward. We love to hear from you. It's important to us to know whether you are getting value out of the podcast and whether you see this as an important part of your day. So please send that feedback to Debra m@albertabeef.org or as per usual, you can reach us through ABPs social channels. Until next time, take care of your mental and physical health. Be kind to others, give yourself some grace, and of course, drink lots of water. Bye for now.