Edmonton's Coldest Christmases

The forecast for Christmas 2021 is looking pretty cold, but how will that compare to some of Edmonton's coldest Christmases?

 

Our coldest Christmas on record also happened to be the first year with temperature records. Way back in 1880 the Low for December 25th was -39.8°C, and a High of -24.4°C. 

The Christmas Day with the coldest High was 1917 at -28.9°C, and a Low of -32.2°C.

In more recent history, since 1980 our coldest Christmas Day was in 1996 with a Low of -29.5°C. And 2012 had the coldest recent High at -20.6°C.

Here we are looking at the whole "holiday weekend" of December 24-26th. 

 In recent years we had at least of few Lows of -25°C~ish in 2017, 2016, 2012, 2009, 2008, 1996 and 1990.

This is the same data as the previous chart, but here each dot is the 3-day average temperature for each year. Our average High is -4°C, and average Low is -13.2°C. 

Warm years like 2011, 2005 and 1997 had average Highs around 6°C, and 1999 was all the way up at 9.3°C. On the other hand cold years like 2017, 2012 and 2008 had average Lows around -25°C, and 1996 was the coldest -27.6°C.

This chart is a little crowded, but it has the 3-day average temperatures for December 24-26, going back to 1880.

1880 is way down on its own, with a 3-day average Low of -39.8°C. There are also a few other years below -30°C: 1886, 1904, 1917, 1933, 1934, 1937 and 1971. And then after that there are quite a few around the -25°C range, including recently 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2017.

This is the coldest week on record for Christmas Eve through New Year's Day. It was back in 1880 again, and over those 9 days the average Low was -34.1°C.

In more recent years 2017 was a standout for an extremely cold break between Christmas and New Year's. The average Low of -27.1°C was the 15th-coldest on record. All 9 days had Lows below -20°C, and that included 7 days which reached -25°C, and 2 of those reached -30°C.

Where will 2021's deepfreeze end up? We'll need to wait and see.