WINTER IS ON ITS WAY
But the good news is it looks like a mild one
But it probably won’t be a harsh one.
Talk to three meteorologists about what the weather will be like over the next few months and you’ll find one thing in common.
Winter is coming.
It might be milder than normal but there’s no avoiding the messiest season of the year.
“We’re not cancelling winter — there will be moments when you’ll wish it wasn’t as tough as it was — but the kind of situation we have is that those bouts of messiness won’t necessarily go on forever,” said Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips in a phone interview on Monday.
Phillips says Cape Breton is doing OK in this year’s weather sweepstakes and for the most part, that good luck should continue. “You’ve been on a roll — you’ve had the warmest September and October on record — things have cooled off a little in November but you haven’t been punished at all yet,” he says. “If there’s one area of Canada that’s likely to be milder than normal, it’s likely to be Atlantic Canada, particularly in the Maritimes because the water is warmer than normal and that’s not going to go away. Winter may come a little later than earlier and so that helps the length of the season.”
Phillips says this year a weak La Nina in the Pacific Ocean will affect the rest of Canada but not so much Atlantic Canada, mainly because of the distance between us and the Pacific. Add that to warmer waters off our coast and you have a recipe for a possibly warmer than usual season.
“Our winters aren’t what they used to be and so it may very well be what we’re seeing in a La Nina situation there’s a hint there that you do get, especially in the Maritimes, warmer than normal and add to that temperatures that are milder, which is a double dose of that which gives you a great chance that it’s going to be milder than normal.”
The official Environment Canada winter outlook won’t be issued until Dec. 1 but Phillips doesn’t expect that one to be much different for Atlantic Canada. He won’t issue a precipitation outlook because it’s too variable to do so. However The Weather Network is predicting a stormy season for a “classic” Canadian winter and issued its seasonal predictions on Monday, Nov. 20.
According to Dayna Vettese of The Weather Network, they’re also predicting a milder than usual winter for Atlantic Canada.
“It does look like it’s going to be an active winter ahead so we are expecting quite a bit in the way of storm activity,” says Vettese. “Now that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of snow or a lot of rain but probably a healthy mix of the two. It’s going to depend on each storm system that comes through where exactly that tracks so whether we’re seeing rain or snow or maybe freezing rain or a mix over Cape Breton, that’s going to depend on each storm. But it does look like it’s going to be a busy winter with regards to storms.
“I’d say we’re fair game between now and the end of the winter.”
Vettese expects the storms to be followed by periods of melting and that many storms will include mixed precipitation.
Paul Pastelok, a meteorologist with AccuWeather, an American-based weather service, says the weather should remain somewhat calm until mid-December. Then, all bets are off.
“We think that as we get to late December, more likely in January, the patterns start to get a little more volatile, a little more active, more extreme,” says Pastelok, adding that while the rest of Canada may experience more snowfall, we should be at a more normal level.
“I think there’s a window in late December and January that we’re really concerned about that it could get kind of active and you could have most of your winter during that time period. And there may be a second wind as you get into March that it gets pretty active again.”
But even this year’s expected worst pales when compared to seasons past, says Phillips.
“We know fundamentally that our climate has changed,” says Phillips. “Our winters aren’t what they used to be.”