March 2020 Review / April 2020 Preview

We're going to cut right to the chase today: was March 2020 as bad as it seemed?


High Temperatures

Here we have the high temperatures for March, and on the bright side the first week was fairly warm? After that it was a lot of ups and down...but mostly downs. March 14th hit a coldest-in-30-year High of -15.2°C, and then we had another one on the 30th at -10.8°C.

The average High on March 1st is -3°C, and by March 30th it increases to +7°C, but in March 2020 the Highs went in the wrong direction.

Looking at the numbers, for March 2020 we had 18 Highs hit 0°C, and that's only a bit below the March average of 20.

But March also averages 12 days which hit 5°C including 4 which hit 10°C, and 2020 only had 6 and 1 of those, respectively.

March 2020's average High of -0.8°C was definitely cooler than average, but was still well above something like 2011's -4.2°C or 2002's -6.4°C.


Low Temperatures

The Lows were also cool, with only 8 that were above average, and 6 of those were in the first week of the month. And the middle of the month had two coldest-in-30-year Lows on the 13th and 15th, along with the cool final week.

March 2020's average Low of -11°C was at the lower end of recent Marches, although 2002 was way down at -16.2°C

We didn't have any -25°C Lows, but the 15th did hit -23.7°C, along with a -20.5°C on the 13th. March averages 1.5 -20°C Lows. Recently March 2018 ended with a -20°C on the 30th, so 2020's month-end coldsnap should not feel completely unprecedented.


Warm & Cold Months

When we add up the Highs & Lows March 2020's mean temperature of -5.9°C ranked as Edmonton's 91st warmest March in the past 140 years. It definitely wasn't warm, but many years (including 2002, 2009, 2011, 2013 & 2014) were colder.

And so when we compare it to recent years March 2020 is a small~ish blue bubble, at -1.6°C colder than the 20th century average for March. That follows a January and February which were 1.1°C and 4.3°C warmer than their 20th century averages.

The biggest problem with March 2020's weather is comparing it to other cities across Canada, shown here as the bubbles furtherest to the right.

Vancouver, Calgary & St. John's shared Edmonton's cool start to spring, although Edmonton's was the coolest. And for Regina through Montréal March 2020 was well above average.


Snow

Everyone is always surprised/annoyed by late-spring snow, but it is basically guaranteed.

2020's 26.2cm was above the March average of 19cm, but was still very typical.

However March did count 13 days with snow, which is quite a bit higher than the average of 8 snowdays.

For the winter so far that brings our total snow to 120.1cm, which is a bit above average for this time of year. Our average for an entire winter is about 125cm, and so we are close to that total, even though there is potentially another month and a half of snow ahead of us.


Snowdepth

The snowdepth had started to fall at both Blatchford and the International, but just took a big jump up. It's well above average, and still a long way from 0cm.

Right now Blatchford has had snow on the ground for 126days in-a-row, and the International got started earlier so it is at 148days.

Those numbers are getting high, but right now they are still well down from 172days at the International in 2017-2018, or 146 days at Blatchford in 2010-2011. (Blatchford data is missing for 2011 through 2015).

This is a comparison of the spring melts for recent years.

2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017 & 2018-2019 all had earlier melts, hitting 0cm by the beginning of April. That is definitely not the case for the winter of 2019-2020 though, which is looking a bit like 2017-2018.


April Temperatures

As far as April goes, it looks like we will be starting things off well below average, which also happened in 2018 & 2002.

For High temperatures on-average April only has 3 days below 0°C, so once this coldsnap passes we should finally be into warmer temperatures. About three-quarters of the time April will have a day hit 20°C, and 2001, 2015, 2016 & 2018 all had days hit 25°C.

Only about one-third of recent Aprils had any Lows hit -10°C. And we haven't had a -20°C in April since 1982, and before that it was 1975, and then 1954.

We almost certainly haven't seen the end of the snow though, because in April and May we average another 15cm and 6cm of snow respectively.