Canada Day Fireworks – Let’s look at the Weather

We love fireworks! So for the past 3 years, we launch fireworks for Canada Day! We started in 2020 when indoor events were not allowed, but outdoor events were. Actually, we get professionals to come and set up big fireworks and it’s the BEST! They last for 15+ minutes and rival any major city’s display.

This year, the weather is somewhat in question… it might be too rainy during the set up time and/or the launch time to actually do the fireworks. Here’s what the public forecast says. We’ll use Wetaskiwin, although Cloverlawn is pretty much centered between Leduc, Wetaskiwin and Camrose:

Yikes, July 1st doesn’t look great, does it? 60% chance of showers during the day.

One of our board members kind of specializes in weather, so here are some more details! This is what the Environment Canada weather models say. This is the rain we can expect in the morning hours, a 12-hour period from midnight July 1 to noon. The tiny pink dot is Cloverlawn:

And here is the afternoon rain amount (noon to midnight):

That’s quite a bit of rain, although you can see there will probably be even more to the north.

Next, let’s look at the cloud cover. This data comes from the Clear Sky Clock, which is a forecast for astronomers. There are forecasts for each hour, where darker blue means a darker sky. Look at the top line for July 1st:

This is the area to look at, circled in green:

Remember 6hat 11 pm is 2300 local, so launch time is the square just to the left of the red line where midnight happens. It looks like there will be some clear skies between 6 pm (1800) and 9 pm (2100), and then it will cloud over. This is the snapshot for Wetaskiwin at 6 pm (00 zulu time, so it says July 2):

And here is the snapshot for 11 pm:

Sooo… it might still be too early to say if the fireworks will go ahead, but it looks promising if the set up guys can start working after 6 pm! I think in past years, they started at 2 pm, so we’ll still just have to wait and see.