Fort McMurray, Alberta

Fort McMurray  is in the northeastern part of Alberta. It is 435km northeast of Edmonton on Highway 63, to the north of Slave Lake. It is in a valley that is 369m above sea level at 56EN, 111EW.

Fort McMurray  is a vibrant urban community with a population of 37 000 people.  It is located on relatively flat land near the Atabasca River, set amid a spectacular landscape of forested valleys, streams, and lush evergreen forest that provides a beautiful natural setting.

Known as Alberta's Northern Light, Fort McMurray is the major commercial, cultural and recreational centre for the oil sands region. While oil sands activity dominates the local economy, it flourished in the past as a centre for the barging, logging, salt production and fish packing industries. Today there is a growing focus on the areas forestry, small business manufacturing and tourism industries.

Fort McMurray is well know for it’s industry in oil and supplies Canada with 25% of it’s energy needs.  It also supplies Canada with sulphur and coke.  Fort MuMurray is also expanding it’s business industry to include products such as lumber, assorted chemicals, rubber products, and bakery products.

                                                                             
The following data and climagraph represents the average temperature and precipitation for Fort McMurray, Alberta over the last 25 years.

Data for climagraph from Environment, Canada

                                                                Climate Analysis

Fort McMurray experiences a continental climate.  It has fairly warm summers and cool winters.  The temperature range is approximately 36.4EC while the annual precipitation is 464.8mm.  This precipitation falls mostly in the summer months.

Factors affecting the climate of Fort McMurray:

Temperature:

Latitude: Fort McMurray has latitude of 56EN. This means it is a large distance from the equator so they do not get as much of the sun’s heat because the sun’s rays are at a large angle.  There is also a very high albedo (this results when the sun’s rays reflect off the snow and bounce back into the atmosphere as light rather than heat) causing winter temperatures to be cold.

Air Mass: In the winter Fort McMurray is affected by the continental arctic air mass that brings extremely cold conditions from the Arctic.  In the summer Fort McMurray is affected by the maritime pacific air mass, which is cool and moist.  Fort McMurray is quite a distance inland so the air mass has to travel over the land, which has been warmed by the sun. This helps account for the increase in summer temperature.

Precipitation:

Latitude: Located so far north means that Fort McMurray receives precipitation in the form of snow for 5 or 6 months of the year.

Nearness to Water:  Since Fort McMurray is such a long distance from any major water body there is little precipitation in winter. Summer rainfall, occurs as a result of the land heating causing convectional precipitation The air mass then becomes warm, not being able to retain all of it’s moisture, it drops it in the form of rain.  This accounts for the larger amount of precipitation in the summer months.

Air Masses: There’s not as much precipitation in the winter months as there are in the summer months because the continental arctic air mass that is very cold cannot hold much water.

Altitude and Landforms: These factors have no significant impact on climate in this area.

This report was completed by Megan Organ.