Calgary comes close to forecast record high of 27 C

Friday was shaping up to be the warmest day ever this early in the year in Calgary, an Environment Canada climatologist told CBC News.

It didn't happen but we got close.

At 2 p.m. it was 23 C, according to Environment Canada.

Had we reached the predicted 27 C,it would have been the hottest spring day since the city first started keeping track in the 1880s, according to David Phillips.

"This is absolutely incredible," Phillips said.

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"You'll have some yearswhere the temperature won't get to 27 degrees,and here it is on April the 8th.I mean, my gosh. I mean this is just not, not, not possible. It's really a head shaker," he said, before the high of 23 C was reached.

The record high for April 8 was in 1977 when it reached 25 C.

April in Calgary is usually a bit of a bleak time of year, with still-brown lawns, a fewheavy, wet spring snowstorms, andmaybe a first robin sighting to remind us that spring will finally arrive.

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The average maximum temperature for April 8 in Calgary is 9.7 C, according to Environment Canada.

Calgary's early taste of summer is due to El Nino, a phenomenon that occurs whenwater temperatures rise above normal across the central and eastern Pacific Oceannear the equator, saidEnvironment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor.

That warm water has in turn led to a strong upper ridge that's built across the Pacific Northwest, into British Columbia and into Alberta over the last number of days.

"And that ridge is really strongly amplifying today as a really significant low-pressure area as it starts to cross northern British Columbia," he said.

"As that El Nino starts to wane later on this year, we'll probably see a return to more seasonal conditions."

It's expected to cool down a little over the weekend, with a high of 16 C on Saturday and 11 C on Sunday, but still quite sunny. And the warm weather is expected to last through most of next week.

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