Lousy Smarch Weather - recap

After the chilly temperatures last week, it looks like this week should be pretty warm.

Last week in Lousy Smarch Weather I took a quick look at the impending coldsnap, and today we're going to see how it actually turned out.

Forecast High Temperatures versus Reality

Here we have the actual, daily high Temperatures from last week, compared to what Environment Canada and The Weather Network were predicting as of last Sunday.

And so we were just a little bit warmer than Environment Canada's forecast, and thankfully we were about 5°C warmer than The Weather Network's predictions.

Sunday's High of -12°C made it the coldest March 12th going back to 1995. Earlier in the week we were nowhere near the recent-coldest, but were right inline with the 2nd-coldest.

Forecast Low Temperatures versus Reality

For the Low temperatures, The Weather Network had been predicting some extremely cold days, and thankfully those didn't materialize. We were also generally a little bit warmer than Environment Canada's forecast as well.

A lot of people - including myself - did not like the weather last week, but as cold as it felt it was still 10°C or 15°C warmer than the dark blues, which show the coldest March days going back to 1996.

Other Cold Marches

As a comparison, here are the High temperatures for some of the other cold Marches from just the past few years.

• 2009 got much colder at this point, but it didn't last as long. 
• 2011 was about as cold at this point, but with some warmer days to break things up.
• 2013 got about this cold, but it was actually a week later.
• 2014 started and ended the month well below average, and well below freezing.

And here are the Lows:

And the Lows are a similar story:

• 2009 was much, much colder at this point.
• 2011 was pretty similar.
• 2013 got about this cold, but it was a week later.
• 2014 started and ended the month below average.

Even though cold Marches happen about every-other-year, I remember one specific March being particularly cold and crummy for bike commuting. Although, looking at this list I'm not actually sure which year that would have been? I'm going to guess that it was 2014 - extremely cold to begin with, and then the last two weeks probably got to me. There are still almost 3 weeks of March 2017 left, and hopefully we don't see a repeat of that.