Wind shift helps end cold war on city, but warm air won’t stay
Hamiltonians are being gifted a reprieve from the recent bitter cold.
After 17 days of below-freezing temperatures, the city was hit Monday with the proverbial January thaw, which could last until the weekend.
“It’s like a breath of fresh air,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada. “I can’t remember a time when the January thaw was so welcomed.”
While a breath of fresh air might not be what’s actually responsible for the relief, it is a change of winds, now coming up from the southwest and bringing the warmth with them, he said.
Temperatures are supposed to hover around freezing this week — climbing as high as 7 C Thursday — before dipping down to as low as -13 C Saturday.
These temperatures aren’t record breaking — Hamilton’s warmest Jan. 11 on record dates back to 1975 when things heated up to 12.8 C — but it is the
first time the city has seen positive temperatures since the first day of winter on Dec. 21.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Phillips quipped. “What we’re going to see is something that definitely feels tropical compared to what we had.”
With the bitter cold, 213 Hamilton residents reported frozen water services to the city, spokesperson Jasmine Graham said Monday.
This compares to only about a dozen calls in total last year during what was a notably mild winter.
With chillier than normal temperatures, Hamilton hasn’t seen the snow it typically would by this time of year.
Six centimetres of the white stuff has fallen in January.
Since the cold began, Hamilton has been hit with about 22 centimetres of snow, Phillips said.
“There’s been no monster storm,” he added.
But Hamilton did get enough snow overnight Sunday to make for a messy Monday commute. The snow tapered off around lunchtime and turned into a light drizzle.
City crews came in early Sunday night at 7 p.m. to start “attacking the event,” said Bob Paul, the city’s manager of roads and maintenance.
By 4 p.m. Monday, the city was finishing up clearing all priority 1 and 2 roads (major streets and area expressways) and would begin turning its attention to priority 3 roads, which are residential streets.
“Crews will still be continuing around the clock,” he said.
Paul asked residents to move their cars off the street wherever possible to make it easier for plows and ensure they don’t have to return to the same streets.
With temperatures climbing a little warmer than normal, we can expect “more action,” whether that’s showers, drizzle, snow, flurries or freezing rain, Phillips warned.
The forecast shows a chance of flurries or rain showers Wednesday, a 60 per cent chance of showers Thursday followed by an 80 per cent chance of snow Saturday.
“I guess you pick your poison,” Phillips said, adding you can’t have sunny, warm weather in the winter. It’s either sunny and cold or overcast and mild, he said.
Looking ahead to next week, things are expected to warm up again after temperatures dip down as low as -10 C Sunday.
But that doesn’t mean we’ve used up our share of winter days, Phillips warned.
“I don’t think necessarily that the back of winter is broken,” he said.
Typically, Hamilton sees three days with temperatures below -20 C each winter. Last year, we didn’t have any. This year, we’ve already had seven.
“If it’s an allotment, it’s overstayed its time, but that’s not the case,” he said.
According to Phillips, the good news is the temperatures likely won’t get as cold as they have been, and they won’t last for as long.
Typically in southern Ontario, there’s a change of air mass every three or four days, meaning cold weather usually doesn’t hang around.
“We’re acclimatized to it,” he said.
“It’s hard to imagine us getting something worse.
“We’ll be able to handle whatever we get in the future from at least a temperature point of view.”