I find it's tough to remember what things were like in previous years, and so for some context March 2016 was really warm, and March 2017 started with a long and severe coldsnap before warming up. What did March 2018 bring us?
High Temperatures
This chart shows the High temperatures for the last month, compared to the average and the extremes going back to 1996.
In the past we've looked at the fact that our temperatures don't spend much time around the average. Instead they often bounce around a lot between well above average and well below. But this March was a bit of an exception, with the Highs tracking pretty closely to the average...right up until the coldsnap at the end of the month.
The -10.4°C on March 30th was the coldest-High on March 30th since 1936. That was the all-time record coldest-High at -12.2°C.
The fact that we didn't have any warmspells this month meant that this was one of the relatively uncommon Marches without a day that hit 10°C: like 2011, 2006, 2002 and 1999. That's a change from the last few years, where 2015 had 10 (including 4 days which hit 15°C), 2016 had 8, and 2017 had 7.
We did have 5 days that hit 5°C, but that is well below the average of 12. And the average number of days above freezing for March is 19, and this year we only had 15.
The average High for the month was 0.3°C which is a little cool, but because we didn't have any true deepfreezes it was still above years like 2011 at -4.2°C, or 2002 at -6.4°C.
Low Temperatures
The Low temperatures were a little bit more variable than the Highs, but they still stuck pretty close to the average right up until the late coldsnap. And that coldsnap set recent coldest-Lows on March 29, 30 and 31. The -15.2°C on the 30th was the coldest since 1954, but still a few degrees above the record of -19.4°C set in 1924. And the -20°C on March 31st was the coldest March 31st since 1936, which has the record at -23.3°C.
The average Low of -9.8°C was again on the cool side, and was just a bit colder than the -9.2°C from last March. But those are well above a really cold March like 2002, which was down at -16.2°C.
This March also didn't have any Lows above freezing, which is a little unusual. On average we get about 3 days, but other years that had 0 were 2013, 2009, 2006, and 2002.
Snowfall
We had 28.2cm of snow this March, and that is just a bit more than the 26.6cm from March of last year. That's above average, and right around the 75th percentile. That also makes March the snowiest month of the winter of 2017-2018, with November in second place down at 19.4cm.
I know that everyone wants winter to be over, but there's about a 90% chance that we'll get some snow in April (the average for April is about 15cm), and a better than 50% chance that we might get some snow in May too.
Snowdepth
According to Environment Canada's numbers we didn't see much melting in March, at either the International or Blatchford. Normally the snowdepth numbers really start to fall in late March, but because we didn't have any of those 10°C days this year it hasn't started to happen yet. I know that I personally saw some melting, but a lot of that was probably near roads, buildings, and the edges of things. Out in the middle of field I can believe that things didn't drop too much this month.
That leaves the International at 31cm and Blatchford at 26cm, which is roughly the 2nd highest since 1995. At this point in the year 2013 had 29cm, 2011 had 40cm, and 2009 had 27cm. In comparison years like 2017, 2016, 2015, 2012 and 2010 were all down at 0cm at the end of March.
April
These tables show the High and Low temperatures for April, going back to 1999. The main thing to keep in mind is that the orange days in the table were above freezing, and the blue were below. I'm just going to leave this here, because recently when I try to talk about what might happen next month that hasn't been going very well.
For some quick trivia, though:
- 14 of the last 19 Aprils have had at least one day that hit 20°C.
- Since 1999 the April with the most Highs below 0°C was 2002, with 9. Right now the experts' forecast for 2018 is predicting Highs below 0°C through April 8th.
- The last time that we hit -20°C in April was 1982. And before that it was 1975, and then 1954.
- Last April was the snowiest April ever recorded at the International Airport with 43.2cm
So that's it for today. In the next week we'll be starting the multi-part 2017-2018 Winter-in-Review to take a look back at the last few months.
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