Submitted by Bill Caulfeild-Browne
You’ll have to go back to the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s to find a significantly warmer January than the one we’ve just experienced. The mean temperature for the month in the last century was -6.2C; this year it was -1.8C, a whopping 4.4C difference. The opening week was particularly warm – the first frost of the year didn’t arrive until early morning on the 7th. My weather station has recorded similar warmer temperatures in both 2002 and 2006, part our climate-change induced warming.
The high for the month was 4.6C on the 16th and the low was -9.9 on the 14th. Not even double digits! But we were not alone – temperatures across the North were even more extreme. For example, on January 16th Moosonee was 21.3C above normal. Virtually all locations in the Province had mean temperatures of 4 or 5C above normal, with Thunder Bay leading at 5.6C above.
Precipitation was about what we’d expect – just 10 mm. above the norm of 55 mm. As usual, a cautionary note: my station converts snow into water and the depth on the ground can vary widely depending on whether it’s dry, dusty snow or big wet flakes. Purely subjectively I’d say the snowfall was normal.
The most significant event of the month was the major storm of January 25/27th. We got off relatively lightly compared to the chaos around southwestern Ontario. The storm cut a swath from Windsor to Montreal causing multiple car accidents and flight delays. Areas north of Wiarton only got the tail end – we saw our highest winds (60 kms/hr) but only about 10 cm. of snow. Our biggest problem was blowing snow.
As I write this on February 2nd, the mercury is showing a balmy zero degrees. But the forecast is for a violent polar front to move through tonight bringing the thermometer as low as -23C. If it turns out to be true, it will be the coldest day in eight years! We may get some real winter yet.
