It’s looking like a warmer spring is in the air for Ontarians this season. Winter has clearly come to a close in southern Ontario and residents have been greeted with well above-average temperatures during mid March, but is that warm spring weather here to stay?
It was a warmer than average winter across southern Ontario but February brought the coldest temperatures of the season. So far at the beginning of spring, temperatures have been in the mid-teens with not much precipitation in sight. Looking back to last year at this time, temperatures for the most part were much lower than now, and even colder throughout April.
Looking ahead to what is projected for spring this year, Environment Canada is predicting an above-average spring in terms of temperatures all across southern Ontario and into parts of northern Ontario.
According to Environment Canada meteorologist Steven Flisfeder, they’re having a hard time tracking how much precipitation we will receive.
“It’s kind of a toss up at this moment, all the guidance that we have is inconsistent with each other so we can’t give any specifics for precipitation. There’s equal chance of above (average) and equal chance of below (average),” Flisfeder said.
In terms of possible surprises in weather that we could see in the next few months, the possibility is always there. Looking back at this past winter, for a couple weeks we had temperatures well above seasonal. Flisfeder says surprises like that can happen at any given moment, and it’s not something Environment Canada can predict. It’s important to remember that these predictions are never 100 per cent correct, and are always a work in progress.
The projection for spring 2020 was a warm-up of temperatures over four degrees above average, but that was rarely seen until late May when summer temperatures began showing through. Last year’s spring was very up and down with temperatures primarily below seasonal.
For example, last year parts of southern Ontario had snow in April and even in some parts through early May. Luckily for Ontarians, we shouldn’t be seeing any snow in April this season.
According to the Environment Canada website, “the seasonal forecasts are based on a 20-member ensemble of predictions, 10 members from each of two coupled atmosphere-ocean-land physical climate models.”
Summer weather predictions are not available yet as it is too far in the future for Environment Canada to accurately forecast.
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