Nothing frightening about the Halloween weather
For Montrealers who remember wearing costumes over snowsuits and adjusting their He-Man masks on top of a scarf and toque, the spookiest thing about this Halloween might be how mild the weather is.
Environment Canada is calling for a high of 9 C in Montreal on Tuesday with a 30 per cent chance of showers. It’ll drop to around 2 C that night. However, the weather service says that’s bang-on average historically, despite your snowsuit memories.
The highest recorded Halloween temperature for Montreal was 21.7 C in 1956 and the lowest, Gen-Xers, was -6.9 C in 1988. In 1962, there was eight centimetres of snow on the ground.
The day before Halloween is likely to be a wet one, though. Environment Canada issued a special weather statement on Friday for the Montreal area, warning of heavy rains and high winds that are expected to start sweeping western and central Quebec on Sunday.
The statement, which covers Montreal, Châteauguay-La Prairie, Laval and Longueuil-Varennes areas, says a low-pressure system from the Great Lakes will affect western and central Quebec beginning Sunday.
That night, a second system arriving from the eastern seaboard will rapidly intensify and bring significant rainfall amounts.
Compared with those and other conditions across Canada, the Weather Network’s chief meteorologist, Chris Scott, said Halloween will feel like a reprieve across most of the country.
Scott said temperatures are expected to be relatively cool and near average in most of Canada, even in regions that have experienced unseasonable highs for most of the month.
He said Canadians from Manitoba through Quebec have basked in temperatures well above seasonal norms but that those balmy periods are probably done for the season.
As well, areas contending with high winds might not be out of the woods come trick-or-treat day. Scott said that might pose some complications for Halloween decorators.
“It’s not so much on Halloween day but on the Sunday and Monday leading up to Halloween,” Scott told The Canadian Press. “We will see very strong winds. And depending on where those are ... some of these inflatable Frankensteins may be floating down the street.”