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A medium-size (3.5 - 3.9 cm wingspan) fawn or grey-brown moth. Male antennae are strongly biserrate, about 5 times the width of the shaft. The thorax is mixed with light grey or white scales, giving a grizzled appearance. The forewing basal, antemedian and postmedian lines are jagged and marked in dark grey, the antemedian line is doubled, and the postmedian toothed is distally at the veins. The orbicular and reniform spots are large but poorly defined, with the orbicular as large as the reniform, rounded or slightly oval, and slightly paler in color than the ground. The subterminal line is indicated by a few dark marks, and the fringe are slightly paler that the ground. Hind wings light grey-brown, usually paler toward the base, with a faint postmedian line, discal bar and terminal band. Fringe white or nearly so. The saccular extensions in the male genitalia are very short, about half the length of the harpe, and the appendix bursa in the female is very large, about 4 times the size of the corpus bursa. Edictalis belongs to the subgenus Longivesica, characterized by the extremely long vesica in the male and a long appendix bursa, exceeding the corpus bursa in length, in females. The male and female genitalia are very distinct from those of any other Euxoa. Keys to the subgenera and species and illustrations of adults and genitalia are provided in Lafontaine, 1987.

South central Alberta and east-central Montana west to south-central BC, south to central California, southern Nevada, central Utah and western Colorado. In Alberta it has been collected only in the Red Deer River valley at Emerson Bridge Recreational area.