An entire May's worth of rain in just 2 days possible for Calgary

Calgary is in the middle of a weather system that could dump roughly the same amount of rain that falls in an average month of May in just a two-day period, Environment Canada tells CBC News.

"It's not moving, it's stationary," senior climatologist David Phillips said of the weather system.

"It's going to sit there like an unwanted house guest and it won't move until Saturday."

He said Calgary typically gets 50 to 55 millimetres of rain for the entire month of May.

From Wednesday through Friday evening, the city could get very close to that.

"We could certainly see a month's total in about 48 hours in Calgary," Phillips said.

Colder, too

And you may have noticed, it's colder than usual, and especially compared with other parts of Western Canada.

"We are seeing temperatures in Regina and Winnipeg today of 25 C … where in Calgary, all you can muster in the middle of Thursday afternoon is 3 C. That's about 12 degrees colder than it should be for this time of the year."

We could break a record for rain on May 21, too.

"Going back over 100 years, for this date [the record] is about 30 millimetres in 1948," Phillips said.

But after the rain comes a few days without it into the middle of next week.

"It won't be until Saturday that you see that gorgeous Alberta sunshine, with dry conditions and temperatures getting up to 14 C on Saturday and 19 C on Sunday."