What Is The Weather Today II (No Mercury Jockeying)

[Arrdeeharharharbour]

Great set Mcminsen! It's nice to see folks swimming in an outdoor pool this time of year right here in our own country!

It's plus 1 and 100% humidity here at the moment. The percip is so fine that I'm not sure if it rain or snow or both. NS is forecast to get up to 15cm of snow inland and at higher elevations. Atlantic coastal areas will start with rain but increasing north winds overnight will likely result in some snow for all of is in NS. We've got a bit of a warm up on the way and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a green xMas.

Dec 14 by A.J. Forsythe, on Flickr

[giallo]

I was in Surrey yesterday, and my car said 14C. No rain, thankfully. The rivers in BC and Washington needed a break.

Surrey and strip malls. Name a more iconic duo.



Whenever we go to Surrey, we always make sure to stop at the Guildford T&T. Some of the best laksa and curry chicken rice in Metro Vancouver is in this food court.












The purpose of the visit was to meet this cute little girl.

[Denscity]

Outdoor swimming in mid December!?
Again how could I live in any other province but my own??

[SignalHillHiker]

Overcast but nice enough.

• Video Link

[TownGuy]

Sunny and frigid. Love it.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Denscity

Outdoor swimming in mid December!?
Again how could I live in any other province but my own??

It's great that you love living in BC and all, but I'm not sure what climate of Vancouver has to do with where you live - which has winter weather more similar to that of Southern Ontario or Nova Scotia than it does to coastal BC.

Also, I imagine you can find heated outdoor pools in any province. Even in Vancouver's mild winters, people aren't swimming in December unless it's heated water or they're doing a cold plunge. It's been warm lately, but not that warm.

[Denscity]

I've been here for over 17 years and have never seen outdoor swimming in mid December. Only in real life at a nearby hot springs but obviously.
We are a hardiness zone 7b or 8a so milder than those places.
I don't have to leave my province for the highest Canadian temperatures in either winter or summer.

[Metro-One]

Not quite southern Washington level, but still some decent warmth today in parts of southern BC.

14.5 in Ashcroft

15.2 in Lytton.

Tomorrow looks like it might be the peak of mild weather in BC, then over a couple days more season temps will take shape, with a chance of some seasonally cool temps by the weekend.

Huge contrast in temperatures in BC though today. From 15.2 in Lytton to -29.9 in Fort Nelson.

[whatnext]

It was 12 when I was driving home at 6pm. Rain was just starting to intensify.

[Nicko999]

-7C with a wind chill of -13 and mainly sunny. Frigid.

Low of -9C (wind chill of -15) last night.

Warmspot was Lytton, BC at 15.2C.

The warmest low was Sisters Island and Qualicum Beach, BC at 9.9C.

Nice mild spell in BC. I see Denscity is talking about outdoor swimming at those temperatures. If only he had experienced our 20C+ (with humidex) on Christmas eve 7-8 years back, he might have needed to turn the AC on.

[SignalHillHiker]

Just west of the city basically everything is closed across the Burin/Bonavista/Baie Verte/Connaigre peninsulas, Central, and the West Coast.

Here, the snow transitioned to rain hours ago so it's a mess.

[MonctonRad]

-9C in Moncton at 8 AM. EC says there is light snow (at the airport), but here at the hospital in central Moncton, it is partly cloudy.

We only got the barest dusting of snow overnight, easily less than a cm, but, in Greater Haligon (AKA Nova Scotia), they are getting a serious storm. Halifax itself and the southern coastal areas got mainly rain. The back end of the storm is passing through Halifax now, and it has transitioned to snow down there. Inland areas of NS as well as northern NS and Cape Breton were entirely snow - some areas got up to 40 cm.

[flar]

This could be our first December without any 10+ days since I've lived here. The most we've had is 7 in 2021, the average high was 6.3 that year and the average low -1.3. By contrast this year we are averaging -1.1 high and -8.1 low. These averages should go up though, as the last half of the month looks to be mostly above freezing.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by Denscity

I've been here for over 17 years and have never seen outdoor swimming in mid December. Only in real life at a nearby hot springs but obviously.
We are a hardiness zone 7b or 8a so milder than those places.
I don't have to leave my province for the highest Canadian temperatures in either winter or summer.

Windsor was bumped up recently to zone 7b, and Castlegar is still a 7b, so pretty similar, I would say.

https://planthardiness.gc.ca/?m=22&lang=en&prov=Ontario&val=W

https://planthardiness.gc.ca/?m=22&lang=en&prov=BritishColumbia&val=C

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

It's great that you love living in BC and all, but I'm not sure what climate of Vancouver has to do with where you live - which has winter weather more similar to that of Southern Ontario or Nova Scotia than it does to coastal BC.

Also, I imagine you can find heated outdoor pools in any province. Even in Vancouver's mild winters, people aren't swimming in December unless it's heated water or they're doing a cold plunge. It's been warm lately, but not that warm.

It is nice to see the discussion sometimes brought down to earth a little.

Vancouver has been mild but dark and dreary with still mostly single-digit temperatures that are maybe typical of November weather. We are not experiencing Puerto Vallarta like weather nor do we have some special winter swimming culture. There are a few hotels with heated outdoor pools. Generally the stratas will shut down in winter. Pools are somewhat rare around here.

Honestly fall weather in Vancouver is not that great. It's probably the worst season here relative to the rest of Canada and it gets very dark with the sun setting early. On the plus side, spring comes early and by February there tends to be an upswing with March being actually decently mild while it's at best a mixed bag in most of the country.

(It rained so much recently that some of the highways were shut down and the Fraser Valley was flooding. So these interior BC areas, some of which are closer to Calgary by car than here, were at least semi cut off.)

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by someone123

It is nice to see the discussion sometimes brought down to earth a little.

Vancouver has been mild but dark and dreary with still mostly single-digit temperatures that are maybe typical of November weather. We are not experiencing Puerto Vallarta like weather nor do we have some special winter swimming culture. There are a few hotels with heated outdoor pools. Generally the stratas will shut down in winter. Pools are somewhat rare around here.

Honestly fall weather in Vancouver is not that great. It's probably the worst season here relative to the rest of Canada and it gets very dark with the sun setting early. On the plus side, spring comes early and by February there tends to be an upswing with March being actually decently mild while it's at best a mixed bag in most of the country.

(It rained so much recently that some of the highways were shut down and the Fraser Valley was flooding. So these interior BC areas, some of which are closer to Calgary by car than here, were at least semi cut off.)

It has indeed been very mild. Brutal for the local ski hills which have virtually no snow heading into the Xmas holidays. Plants also seem confused. I came across this one flowering, anyone know what it is?

[IMG]flower by bcborn, on Flickr[/IMG]
my photo

[mcminsen]

^^^ Mahonia. It normally flowers at this time of year. It looks a bit like a kind of holly but isn't actually related.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by whatnext

It has indeed been very mild. Brutal for the local ski hills which have virtually no snow heading into the Xmas holidays. Plants also seem confused. I came across this one flowering, anyone know what it is?

I think the big one is the warm nighttime lows. I've got balcony plants that are supposed to die in frost but they're still completely fine.

I wonder if the smaller ski hills close to the city will even be viable in the future with climate change.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think the big one is the warm nighttime lows. I've got balcony plants that are supposed to die in frost but they're still completely fine.

I wonder if the smaller ski hills close to the city will even be viable in the future with climate change.

They'll become relics of a bygone era, sadly. It's mid-December, and there's no snow on the mountains. Even most of Whistler is bare right now, and it's not from a lack of precipitation. I don't know how the smaller mountains will survive in the long run.

The warm nighttime lows are a factor, but it's the daytime too. For the last ten days, we've been in the high single/low double digits in East Van. It's 14C on my balcony right now.

As much as some people celebrate these warm temps, it's not good. We need a solid snowpack for our reservoirs and rivers.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Denscity

I've been here for over 17 years and have never seen outdoor swimming in mid December. Only in real life at a nearby hot springs but obviously.
We are a hardiness zone 7b or 8a so milder than those places.
I don't have to leave my province for the highest Canadian temperatures in either winter or summer.

The BC interior's plant hardiness zones look closer to Eastern Canada's than to coastal BC's to me:

Victoria: 9a
Vancouver: 8b
Castlegar: 7b
Windsor: 7b
Toronto: 7a
Kelowna: 6a
Montreal: 6a
Halifax: 6b