Edmonton is cold, but what else is new?
It has actually been warmer than usual, meteorologist says
While Old Man Winter has Edmonton locked in an icy grip, he has also brought higher than normal temperatures for the city this season, according to Environment Canada.
Dan Kulak, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the average temperatures for November, December and January have all been above normal.
In November, the average temperature was -2.2 C while the 30year average, calculated between 1981 and 2010, was -4.1 C, making the month about two degrees warmer than normal.
In December, Edmonton had an average temperature of -6.2 C while the 30-year average was -8.8 C.
Then in January, the city was about four degrees warmer than normal. The average temperature was -6.8 C while the 30-year average was -10.4 C.
“We are within the statistical variation of where we would expect to be,” said Kulak. “It’s routinely expected weather.”
A database published this week by The New York Times shows temperatures in 3,800 cities and Edmonton’s average temperature in 2018 was 0.4 degrees below normal. That’s compared to about 83 per cent of cities that had average temperatures higher than normal last year, according to the AccuWeather analysis.
Edmonton’s current cold weather is due to the polar vortex, adds Kulak.
“You have circulation patterns set up and the cold air forms over the high latitudes, and it forms this cold pool of air over the winter time and Canada is very much subjected to that air,” said Kulak.
“A lot of this cold air forms over the polar regions and at times it makes excursions further south, and goes into all the Prairies.”
Luckily, there is an end in sight to the cold snap.
“They usually last between seven and 14 days when you get a really strong push of arctic air,” said Kulak.
“We got more cold air last Thursday when another front came through and we’re expected to come out of this deep freeze at the latter part of the weekend.
“You can call that a 10-day cold snap in early February, nothing extravagant about that.”