What Is The Weather Today? (No Mercury Jockeying!)

[zoomer]

Victoria’s Gonzales Weather station still hasn’t fallen below zero this winter - but we’re hours if not minutes away from breaking through! As of 9:00 p.m. it’s 0.1 C. Overnight lows are forecast down to -5 C with the potential of snow over the next four days.

Here’s a fun city comparison by Global Edmonton back in 2019. Some of data is for 2017 however, but the city snow removal budgets and other info besides 2017 snowfall would be relatively constant.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4950156/edmonton-winter-snow-plowing-removal-spending/

A bit misleading in some cases, as the $36,000 annual snow removal budget is for the city of Victoria which is quite a small area as Greater Victoria consists of 13 different municipalities.. crazy I know. Montreal at $200 million, that’s a big part of the local economy!

And yes, the city gives itself three days to clear snow.. probably because it has no dedicated snow plots, but has the following equipment:

“ The City of Victoria has six trucks with salters/ploughs as well as a number of backhoes, bobcats, snowblowers, small sidewalk ploughs, a front end loader, and one brine spreading anti-icing truck for pre-treating Victoria roads.”

https://www.victoria.ca/assets/Departmen...sident_snow_clearing_fact_sheet_2013.pdf

[Denscity]

^^^ Looks like Sooke is still at +2C at 10pm. It'll be close.

[The Great Scaper]

I took a few quick photos today of some flowers and blossoms during my travels around Victoria. It was a little cooler than normal but still above zero.

Some cherry blossoms on View Street...
Cherry trees downtown, February by thegreatscaper, on Flickr

More February cherry Blossoms, Victoria Canada by thegreatscaper, on Flickr

And some daffodils from this afternoon...
Daffodils, Victoria B.C. Canada February by thegreatscaper, on Flickr

And some more flowers from today...
February flowers in Victoria B.C. Canada by thegreatscaper, on Flickr

[Denscity]

Early beauty.

[SignalHillHiker]

Even Animal Crossing waits until April for cherry blossoms.

[SpongeG]

They are most likely Plum Blossoms. Plum Blossoms come out first a few months before Cherry Blossoms and they are pretty hard to tell apart. Plum end of Winter, Cherry in Spring. Plum blossoms will also have more fragrance.


cbc.ca

[Marty_Mcfly]

Sunny, windy, and a cold -4 at 9:30am. Looks like with the exception of Friday that we're in an extended cold period, with temperatures below seasonal.

[MonctonRad]

A chilly -17C, sunny and with a windchill of -25 in Moncton at 9 AM. Definitely the coldest day of the year so far! It is supposed to go up to -5C later today.

We'll see how our boxed palm tree on the plaza in front of the Avenir Centre does after this! Maybe they put a heater in the box.

No storms in the seven day forecast period.

[Curmudgeon]

Halifax has a winter mean (Dec-Feb) about 2° higher than that for Calgary, mainly because Calgary gets considerably colder at night due to its interior location, elevation and shorter daylight hours given that it is located 6° farther north.

That's where any similarity ends. Halifax averages 148 cm of snow during meteorological winter, which is even higher than Montreal's 140 cm, and add to that 250 mm of rainfall during the season which gives a whopping 51 out of 90 days with measurable precipitation. In comparison, Calgary sees 45 cm of snow plus 29 mm of rain and more sunshine with 21 precipitation days.

Calgary does see more extreme temperatures averaging 4 days per year of <-30°, whereas Halifax has NEVER had a -30 temperature at all. Calgary will see <-20° on average about one night in four during winter whereas in Halifax this is exceedingly rare (though not so much for interior locations in the Maritimes). On the flip side in most winters Calgary will see some days >15°. All the flipping around is rather trying and hard on structures and that combined with the excessive dryness is very hard on the body, but having said that, in my opinion anyways, Calgary's winters are much more tolerable not only compared with Halifax but compared with any major city in Central or Atlantic Canada.

[SignalHillHiker]

A bone chilling -5C. The roads are ice. Everything is hard and creaky. The wind is howling. It’s an arctic workcamp kind of day. Torture.

[q12]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Calgary's winters are much more tolerable not only compared with Halifax but compared with any major city in Central or Atlantic Canada.

Bad time to make that argument. The next 4 days in Calgary are all you need to show me why I wouldn't tolerate living in Calgary.

CALGARY


HALIFAX

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Nicko999

You might feel this way because of where you've lived/grown up. It feels milder to me when the dewpoint is closer to 0C than when it's -15C (same temperature and condition in both cases). Doesn't mean it's true but your mind is a powerful thing.

No, it is true, it does feel colder on a cold day when it is damp. Not so much when it is very cold obviously, because let's face it, <-20° is cold period, but on days in the -10° range to just above the freezing mark (common winter temps throughout most of the country) the dampness does make it feel colder because clothing will absorb some of the moisture making the body work harder to keep warm. It is even more pronounced if there is some precipitation which gets the clothing or exposed skin slightly wet. This is why a Vancouver drizzly and 2° winter morning fees absolutely raw (and then of course it doesn't seem to ever be very warm inside there so it's hard to shake the cold, but that's another story). It's the reverse in hot weather when humidity results in temperatures feeling warmer. Also, damp climates are far more likely to see lesser amounts of sunshine so there is less radiant heat felt from the sun.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by harls

The -51 windchill makes people say strange things..

Agreed.

Not at Harls, but enough with the mercury jockeying people. Such asinine pettiness. It is Canada, it is winter, it pretty much — for some reason everywhere. We are here to complain about the terrible things we endure.

-30C -44 windchill. Windchill has been below -40 since some time on Saturday, it might eek above that this afternoon if we are lucky.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by q12

Bad time to make that argument. The next 4 days in Calgary are all you need to show me why I wouldn't tolerate living in Calgary.

Yes, Calgary does see more extreme temperatures as I stated above, but average temperatures in winter are only about 2° colder. If you look a few days further on, the temps will recover to seasonal (around 0°) by early next week.

What I absolutely despise about Central Canadian and Maritime winters is actually the result of the milder temperatures. For example, Winnipeg's winter mean is -14.3° compared with -7.6° for Montreal. Because snow (which tends to be the heavy wet kind in the east, 140 cm in Montreal vs 59 cm for Winnipeg), slush, ice, rain (87 mm vs 4 mm for Winnipeg) and freezing rain are all such common occurrences, copious amounts of salt are used everywhere as roads are much more slippery at -2° than they are at -22° and it seldom drops below -18° (0°F) which means salt is effective all winter. The salt absolutely destroys vehicles, I would never buy a vehicle from the east, not to mention shoes and boots and gets everywhere, on your pant legs and even inside the house. Everything is dirty. Also despite their lower latitudes, all cities in southern Ontario and east have lesser amounts of sunshine than the southern prairies, example 278 hours for Toronto, compared with 348 for Winnipeg and 378 for Calgary. Montreal is just about at the same parallel (45th) as Minneapolis but MSP gets 449 hours of winter sunshine compared with 312 for YUL.

Personally, I think the winters everywhere in Canada — in varying ways. I've lived on the west coast and they were trying there too even if they feature gentle temperatures. The real problem with the prairie winter is that it is exceedingly LONG, often setting in by the middle of November and there are no guarantees that March will be a spring month either, so a bad year can feature winters that are five months long. I hate to say this, because it means a longer winter, but we desperately need some snow at least in the Red River Valley and the window is starting to close, just 28.5 mm of precip since November 1st, the normal for Nov through Feb is 80.2 mm, and 2020 was the driest year on record, none in the forecast, it's too cold for measurable precip.

At the moment the NWS suggests average temps for the back half of February and early March for Western and Atlantic Canada and below normal for Ontario and southwestern Quebec.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by zoomer

Victoria’s Gonzales Weather station still hasn’t fallen below zero this winter - but we’re hours if not minutes away from breaking through! As of 9:00 p.m. it’s 0.1 C. Overnight lows are forecast down to -5 C with the potential of snow over the next four days.

Here’s a fun city comparison by Global Edmonton back in 2019. Some of data is for 2017 however, but the city snow removal budgets and other info besides 2017 snowfall would be relatively constant.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4950156/edmonton-winter-snow-plowing-removal-spending/

A bit misleading in some cases, as the $36,000 annual snow removal budget is for the city of Victoria which is quite a small area as Greater Victoria consists of 13 different municipalities.. crazy I know. Montreal at $200 million, that’s a big part of the local economy!
]

Sloppy journalism in more than one way. Why pick a random year for snowfall instead of the year over year averages? Snowfall can vary tremendously.

Quebec City has 750 cm of snowfall! LOL.

Some cities on there are close their averages, but some like QC are way above and others are way below.

[Curmudgeon]

Both Vancouver and Victoria experienced a hard freeze overnight, with temps dropping to -2 at Victoria Harbour, -3 at YVR and lots of -5 temps, including in the Valley, at YYJ and in Nanaimo. Even Tofino dropped to -2. It'll likely be even colder tonight, perhaps even record breaking for Victoria, the record low at YYJ for 11 Feb being -5.5.

Here in the Red River Valley, it's another sunny and cold one, the fifth day now in a row where the temperature will not break -20 and every night of the last six has been below -25, four of them below -30. We didn't get some of the very extreme temperatures seen further west, but we did see a -35 on Monday morning, the first in 2 years. Some moderation is likely early next week and temps should recover to seasonal (-8) by mid or late week.

Currently at YWG, a brilliant blue sky, -30, light westerly. It's nice inside. Despite the cold the sun is noticeably higher in the sky now so there is ever so slightly the first hint of spring. Nearing 10 hours of daylight and about 70 additional minutes in the afternoon compared with the December minimum.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Halifax has a winter mean (Dec-Feb) about 2° higher than that for Calgary, mainly because Calgary gets considerably colder at night due to its interior location, elevation and shorter daylight hours given that it is located 6° farther north.

I don't care about the city competition here or and which city is better is subjective but you are not using good data for Halifax. There is a significant difference between conditions at the airport, which is about 30 km in from the coast in a snowbelt area, and the city itself.

The winter mean for the city (peninsula) is in the -1 to -2 range. Snowfall for the Citadel is 154 cm and Sambro is 114 cm. And in both places most precipitation falls as rain year-round so a lot of this measurable snowfall is stuff that never gets shoveled.

[someone123]

It dropped below 0 here but the temperatures are nowhere near as extreme as Environment Canada originally forecast. I notice this a lot, where there are unusual events (above or below normal) a few days out that regress toward the mean in the forecast as they approach.

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

No, it is true, it does feel colder on a cold day when it is damp. Not so much when it is very cold obviously, because let's face it, <-20° is cold period, but on days in the -10° range to just above the freezing mark (common winter temps throughout most of the country) the dampness does make it feel colder because clothing will absorb some of the moisture making the body work harder to keep warm. It is even more pronounced if there is some precipitation which gets the clothing or exposed skin slightly wet. This is why a Vancouver drizzly and 2° winter morning fees absolutely raw (and then of course it doesn't seem to ever be very warm inside there so it's hard to shake the cold, but that's another story). It's the reverse in hot weather when humidity results in temperatures feeling warmer. Also, damp climates are far more likely to see lesser amounts of sunshine so there is less radiant heat felt from the sun.

It seems that, in fact, this is not true:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hea...ates,and%20making%20you%20feel%20colder.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/w...ert-says-there-s-no-such-thing-1.1306657

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by someone123

It dropped below 0 here but the temperatures are nowhere near as extreme as Environment Canada originally forecast. I notice this a lot, where there are unusual events (above or below normal) a few days out that regress toward the mean in the forecast as they approach.

The Pacific air always bats last...I expect tonight to be quite chilly, but we have dodged the real harsh cold so far. Could still set a record tomorrow if we get down to the predicted -8 tonight, or even -7.