White Christmas unlikely for Halifax
Meteorologist Dayna Vettese of the Weather Network gets right to the point.
“Very slight chance of seeing a white Christmas for the Halifax area,” she said. “We have had quite a mild December so far, but we do have a couple of systems we need to keep an eye on heading into Christmas that could make for some tricky travel conditions.”
Over the past 20 years or so, the chance of a white Christmas in Halifax has been about 45 per cent. To make the picture even more bleak this year, Vettese says the holiday weather won’t be pretty but could well be potentially dangerous.
“We’ve already had quite a few accidents, and a fatality on Wednesday because of black ice, and it does look like we’ll get another system into Saturday that will bring snow to start, then changing over to rain and cooling off a bit after that. A bit of a messy mix. I don’t think we’ll see any snow build up and stick around, but certainly tricky travel conditions Saturday and Sunday,” she said.
“If anywhere has a better chance it would be up through Cape Breton. Now there is another storm system, right for Christmas Day, that we’re tracking right now. There is a bit of discrepancy in the weather models as to its exact track, and that track will determine whether we get snow on Christmas itself.”
The average amount of snow on the ground for Christmas morning in Halifax is 3-5 centi- metres. Last year there was barely a centimetre, no snow the year before that, and lots of rain the year before that. In 2013 we had a white Christmas, with snow on the ground.
Vettese, one of dozens of meteorologists at the Weather Network, said the Arctic is always a good bet to have yuletide snow on the ground (obviously), along, this year, with eastern Ontario and southern Quebec.
“Most of Quebec’s got a pretty deep snow pack, some areas of Newfoundland as well, some regions across the Prairies. For example, Calgary and south just got a load of snow recently and their temperatures are cooling off, so that’s not going anywhere. We did have quite a bit of snow in the B.C. interior, even Vancouver got some snow but that should melt off a bit. I would say littlest chance would be probably in Nova Scotia, and Vancouver, Victoria,” she said.
“Between the Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve timeframe, we do see a big cooling off in our temperatures and that’s almost nationwide. The jet stream is sinking south and a lot of cold weather filtering into areas that generally weren’t all that cold in December, and that includes the Maritimes. With those cooler temperatures heading into the new year, we do have a chance of seeing some snow . . . and much cooler temperatures than we’ve been experiencing, but unfortunately it’s going to be one of those rollercoaster winters, up and down and all over the place, which is kind of par for the course for Nova Scotia.”