With today marking the first day of summer, Foothills residents may be wondering what's in store for the forecast.

Blaine Lowry, Warning Preparedness Meteorologist with Environment Canada, says overall we shouldn't see any extremes.

"For the Okotoks area, it's kind of looking normal. There's no strong signal either way for precipitation or temperature to be above or below normal, so that just means we can expect the normal mix of sunny and warm days and stormy weather as well."

Last summer June saw the greatest amount of precipitation at 117 mL of rain.

Lowry says the prairies and mountains play a role in what we see for summer storms.

"Over the summer we get heat and humidity that can come into the southern prairies and tend to fuel that thunderstorm development.  We saw that this past weekend in the Calgary area. So, the heat and humidity provide the fuel and a cold front towards the mountains and foothills can act as a trigger for those storms to develop and that leads to some of the severe weather we've seen and will continue to see over the summer."

For the full five day forecast click here.

 

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email news@highriveronline.com