A winter that was supposed to be colder than normal has actually been rather balmy, but experts say cooler temperatures really are coming.
December temperatures across the Prairies were much warmer than normal — as high as eight degrees in some places. Already in 2012, Calgary has seen successive days without freezing and in Maple Creek, Sask., the temperature crept above 10 C today.
“I’m a little gun shy right now. given the fact that we said it was going to be a colder than normal winter,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
Read Also
Draft ‘MAHA’ commission report avoids pesticide crackdown feared by farm groups
The White House will not impose new guardrails on the farm industry’s use of pesticides as part of a strategy to address children’s health outcomes, according to a draft obtained by Reuters of a widely anticipated report from President Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ commission.
At the end of November, Environment Canada’s seasonal forecast projected below normal temperatures for the entire prairie region, showing the effects of La Nina conditions.
That projection has now been updated for January through March to show colder-than-normal temperatures in the northern Prairies but also normal temperatures in southern and central regions and even milder weather in southern regions along the Souris and Assiniboine rivers.
“It really has truly been a remarkable winter, but you can’t hold this,” said Phillips. “The bully is winter and the bully is sleeping and it will waken up and come and freeze.”
The warmer autumn and early winter can be linked to the positive phase of Arctic oscillation and a weak La Nina, explained Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc.
The positive phase has hung around longer than expected, but Lerner expects the weather pattern to enter its negative phase in the next few weeks, which should send colder air down to the surface.
“It may not be cold all the time and it may not be bitterly cold, because there doesn’t seem to be a tremendous amount of bitter cold air in the higher latitudes right now, but we will see colder conditions than what we’ve been seeing.”
However, colder temperatures doesn’t necessarily mean increased precipitation, of which there’s been only marginal amounts.
Winnipeg, which in a normal year would receive 47 centimetres of snow, has seen only 27 cm.
“It’s like the totally opposite of last year,” said Phillips. “Last year was the perfect storm for flooding. This is the perfect storm for no flooding.”
Lerner said that with a dry bias through the fall and early winter, below-average precipitation can be expected. As well, negative Arctic oscillation won’t benefit the Prairies.
“We’ll have a lot of cold air around and it’ll push the jet stream far to the south, so far to the south that we’ll not be involved with the jet stream or the storm track and so we’ll end up missing all the major storms,” he said.
A more neutral Arctic oscillation with a strong La Nina influence is the ideal situation for producers, said Lerner.
“If everything goes the way I think it will, we will have some snow to melt. It will not be substantial, but it will moisten up the topsoil maybe in the early days of spring a little bit,” he said. “We will have some moisture deficits in the region.”
