Environment Canada says forecasters did a proper job of updating the weather for Calgary Wednesday morning, even though the department did not predict the heavy snow that fell overnight and in the early morning.

Wednesday's 5 a.m. forecast called for cloudy with sunny periods and a 60 per cent chance of flurries, but it had already been snowing since before midnight Tuesday.

Environment Canada didn't update it's forecast until 8:40 a.m., after most Calgarians had already woken up to streets, vehicles and sidewalks covered in snow. In fact, one centimetre fell in the late evening Tuesday and another five centimetres fell on Wednesday before noon.

Calgary's weather is predicted from the Environment Canada office in Edmonton, said Dan Kulak, a meteorologist in that office.

"I suspect they were thinking … it was going to be moving through early in the morning hours and not quite as intense as it happened. And when they realized there was an issue, then they took their corrective action."

Darr Maqbool, a meteorologist who once worked for Environment Canada and A-Channel and now has his own weather forecast company, predicted Wednesday's storm.

Maqbool says with technology it doesn't matter where the forecasters work.

"I could be sitting in Timbuktu and forecasting precisely for the city of Calgary or the city of Lethbridge or Edmonton or whatever city you have a preference for."

Maqbool adds that he also has 20 years of experience predicting Calgary's quirky weather.

Much of the snow in Calgary has already melted and Environment Canada is predicting a high of 13 C on Thursday.