Birkebeiner Weather

This weekend is the Birkebeiner cross-country ski festival, and the weather looks like it should be pretty good. Let's take a look back at the history of its weather.

Temperature History

These temperatures are for Blatchford, so they aren't necessarily representative of Elk Island where the event is held, but this should at least give an idea of the warm years and the cold years.

1985 was the first time that the Birkebeiner was held in Edmonton, and it was also the coldest with 3 Lows below -25°C and 3 Highs below -20°C. 2008 was another cold one, with 3 Lows below -25°C, and the event was cancelled that year when the windchills were measured down to -46°C.

The warmest Birkebeiner was 2011 with 3 Highs above 5°C, and 3 Lows just below freezing. Recently there had been a string of warm years though, with 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017 all have days above freezing.

The average High temperature has been -4°C, and the average Low -14°C.

Snowdepth

This chart shows the measured snowdepth for each year. These numbers are from the International Airport, which again won't be a perfect match for Elk Island,

Going back through the Birkebeiner's History, it looks like the event was cancelled due to lack of snow in 1987, 2001, 2006, and 2016. (and also in 2008 because of extreme windchills)

In 2018 we're at 34cm of snow, which is the 5th highest in the Birkbeiner's history.

Fresh Snow (or sometimes Rain)

This chart shows how much precipitation - either snow or rain - fell during each Birkbeiner weekend. The snowiest year was 1988 with 18cm falling during the Saturday, and the rainiest was 2015, with 7.4mm falling during the Saturday.