If you are planning any weekend travel across Southern Alberta this weekend Mother Nature may have other plans. Environment Canada updated its special weather statement to a full-blown snow fall warning late Thursday. 

There is a weather system coming up from the U.S that could bring with it potentially 10 to 20 cm of snow throughout Strathmore and surrounding areas.  The heaviest snow is forecasted to occur near and along Highway 1 between Calgary and the Alberta-Saskatchewan border Friday afternoon and evening.

Environment Canada lists their confidence in this as "low to moderate" which Meteorologist with Environment Canada Kyle Fougere explained is because the current weather tracking devices are sharing conflicting information on where the heaviest snowfall will land. 

"We're confident that we're going to have snow, it's just 'will it be 5-10 cm or will it be 15-20?' That depends on where the track goes. What we're confident in is there's a system coming through, there will be snow, but who's going to get the worst of it, we're still settling on that," he said.

Snow will begin early Friday morning and continue through the day, prepare for quickly changing and deteriorating travel conditions. Visibility may be suddenly reduced at times in heavy snow. 

The silver lining with this system coming our way is we shouldn't see too drastic of a drop in temperature with an expected high of -7 on  Friday and - 6 on Saturday without the wind chill taken into account. Fougere said this is because the system isn't bringing arctic air, which is usually what causes sudden cold snaps, looking at the long-range forecast we can expect warmer temperatures to return by the start of next week.

"It's not really cold air that's going to flood in behind the system, it's going to be more westerly winds, which would bring in some warmer conditions."

Stay up to date at Strathmorenow.com/weather and for driving conditions visit alberta511.ca/alerts.

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