Toronto ties its record for warmest winter
Despite a few cold snaps in Toronto this winter, the city just wrapped up its warmest meteorological winter on record, tying with the season of 2001. The mean temperature from December through February, according to weather historian Rolf Campbell, was 1.3 degrees C.
Perhaps not surprisingly, seven of the 10 warmest winters in Toronto's recorded history happened in this century. Following the tie with 2001, the warmest winters in descending order were 2015, 2011, 1997, 1931, 2022, 2016, 1952 and 2019.
February had its own record, according to Campbell, who gathers raw statistics from Environment Canada to generate his data, and who tweets out the numbers from @Yyz_weather on the social media platform X.
He found that last month marked the first time since record-keeping began that Toronto's February had a mean temperature above 1.4 C, beating the secondplace temperature of 1998. Half of the top 10 years have been in this century, with record low having taken place in February of 1875, not long after the end of a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age.
Toronto's news followed just days after Environment Canada reported that Montreal had just experienced its second-warmest winter season since records there began in 1871.
Environment Canada meteorologist Gregory Yang said the mean temperatures for December, January and February were each approximately four degrees warmer than the “climatological means” recorded over the 30-year period between 1981 and 2010.
He said the city experienced a record-breaking high of 14.9 degrees on Feb. 27, and that the overall winter temperature was surpassed only by the 2001-2002 season.
Yang said the mean temperature was -1 C for December, -5.3 C for January, and -3.4 for February. That compares to the 1981-2010 averages of -5.4 C, -9.7 C and -7.7 C, for the same months.
December across Quebec was marked by an snowfall deficit. While Montreal's snowfall was close to average due to an early December storm, the city was one of many places across the province that experienced a green Christmas.
The Weather Network's spring forecast, released last week, suggested most Canadians can look forward to similar conditions this spring. It called for a warmer-than-normal season, but also warned Canadians to brace for the season's “profound mood swings.”
Of course, it wouldn't be Canada if there wasn't frigid weather somewhere. On Monday, even as Toronto was seeing highs of 14 C – breaking the record for that day, set in 1974 – much of the Prairies were in the grip of a cold spell.
Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning for parts of northern Saskatchewan and northern Manitoba, with up to 20 centimetres expected in some regions before tapering off Monday evening.
Sections of many highways in Manitoba were closed Monday morning due to poor visibility and swirling snow, while several school divisions, including Lord Selkirk, Hanover, Sunrise, Red River and Brandon, shut schools for the day.