It's Cold

Earlier this week we looked at the Blatchford weather station's 1,080+ day streak without a temperature of -30°C.

That came to an end on December 30, 2017, having lasted from January 4, 2015 for a total of 1,089 days. That made it the 4th longest streak, following a 1,109 day streak that ended in 2009, a 1,138 day streak that ended in 1987, and the 1,835 day streak that lasted almost 5 years from January 13, 1998 through January 3, 2003.

Today we're just going to look at some charts.

This is an updated version of the chart from a few days ago, which shows all of Blatchford's Lows below -30°C. Our two new additions appear on the right side.

And as I said last time, the big thing to take from this is just how much sparser the right side of the chart is compared to the left.

...and now in 3d!

Here we have the same data in a slightly format. These 3d charts aren't particularly clear, and so I don't use them very often, but sometimes they're fun to play with.

This shows every day since 1880 that had a Low of -20°C or below, and the focus again is really is on the left side versus the right side. Almost all of Blatchford's -40s and -45s occurred before 1950. As we move into the -35s and -30s we get some points appearing on the right side, but they're pretty sparse.

Recent History

Things can get a little busy going all the way back to 1880 so here we're just looking at recent history back to 1980. The previous chart showed Lows below -20°C, but this one includes everything below freezing.

Each of the decades here recorded 3 or 4 Lows below -35°C...except for the 2010s which hasn't had any yet. 

And for Lows of -30°C or below the 1980s had 33, the 1990s had 42, the 2000s had 18, and so far the 2010s are at 10.

Edited to add:

And here's the same chart for cold temperatures at the International Airport, going back to when its records began in 1960.