In Like A Lion – And Out Like A Lion!
Submitted by Bill Caulfeild-Browne
I guess March 2025 will be remembered for a long time – the last few days in particular.
The month started out cold and windy, the mercury hovering around -13C with winds gusting to 57km/hr. But by the middle of the month things were looking distinctly spring-like, with temperatures as high as 14.5C and only light winds. St. Catherines set a record at 22C.
It was not to last. The “warm before the storm” arrived on the 27th with the mercury rising to 6.8C. Then all hell broke loose with freezing rain, ice pellets mixed with snow and gusty winds. Power lines went down all over Southern Ontario resulting in hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity – including most on the Peninsula. As I write this on April 2nd there are still hundreds of outages, although Tobermory seems to have somewhat recovered. Some areas had ice accretion of 20mm or more and with temperatures generally just below the freezing mark, the ice wasn’t melting.
Precipitation, at 96mm, was the third highest amount for March in the 29 years my station has been functioning. It is almost certainly under-reported as the winds off the lake were driving much of the moisture right over my rain collector. I’d prefer to believe the Tobermory airport station which recorded 141mm.
Despite the weather, March was 2.6C above the normal temperature for this time of year. One wonders whether this evidence of climate change might be responsible for the kind of storms we’re experiencing.
Today more freezing rain is forecast, so the drama is not over yet. I’ll report on the whole story next month.
