April has historic icy tantrum, then blows us a kiss

April was the cruellest month because it was the coolest month.

And by cool, I don’t mean awesome. I just mean freezing cold.

In fact, we’ve just lived through the coldest April in Waterloo Region since records started to be kept in 1915.

As of Monday afternoon, the average temperature in April 2018 was 2 C. That’s close to what the temperature is inside a fridge.

Until now, it was 1975 that had the

distinction of presenting the coldest April in history, said Rob Kuhn, meteorologist with Environment Canada’s Ontario Storm Prediction Centre.

Think about that. It hasn’t been so cold here in April since the Vietnam War was ending and teenagers were dancing to “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille.

Kuhn was in Grade 8 then — and remembers a storm early in the month that produced 27 centimetres of snow. He remembers how strange it was to have so much snow when the sun was so high in the sky and it stayed light so late.

In more recent memory, a couple of weeks ago we got what he calls “that ice-pellet concrete storm” with layers of freezing rain over a carpet of ice pellets. On the roads, “it was like driving in wet sand, wet cement,” he said. “It’s easy to get stuck in it, even with winter tires.”

Local farmer Joseph Gmach knows he has already lost some time on his 52-acre farm in the rolling hills near New Dundee.

Gmach and his family are one of a few local farmers selling food at the Kitchener Market that they grow themselves. For most of the winter their stall has offered winter vegetables like beets, leeks, potatoes and carrots. Asparagus is the first fresh vegetable of spring. It will be a treat, when it comes. But its season — already so short — will be delayed by at least a week because of the cold temperatures, Gmach says.

In normal conditions, it would be available the first week of May. This year, the soil hasn’t had a chance to warm up and it isn’t ready to pick.

Gmach is a high school teacher as well as a farmer. Growing food on a family farm is too risky to make it your only source of income. But he pays close attention to the weather. He thinks springs are becoming cooler and falls are becoming warmer.

Gmach is “very observant,” says Frank Segleniecks, co-ordinator of the weather station at University of Waterloo.

Segleniecks agrees with Gmach. “It’s almost as if the seasons have shifted,” he said.

But like many people who study the weather, neither Kuhn nor Segleniecks can say whether this shift is due to climate change or natural climate variability.

“We’re in the middle of it,” Segleniecks said. “When you’re in the middle of something, it’s tough to see.”

All I could see, as soon as the warm sun came out, was brightly coloured crocus and delicate snowdrops, and lawns already turned emerald green that are thickly carpeted with hundreds of tiny blue flowers.

Soon there will be tulips and daffodils, those garden show-offs; and then the heady perfumes of lily-of-the-valley and lilac on the warm breeze. It almost makes you forget that April had once been in such a bad mood, blasting us with icy winds. Because at the last minute, she blew us a warm dazzling kiss on her way out the door.