Thursday, March 08, 2012

Record Warmth

You can almost hear the snow melting, and what we are left with is mounds of snirt, a nasty combination of once pure white snow mixed with everything hidden by winter and sprinkled with road grime, salt and sand.

What a change in weather this week, from Monday's -17C mroning lows to yesterdays record tying high of 11.7C here in Montreal at Trudeau Airport. Montreal had actually one of the colder readings yesterday with the winds blowing in off frozen Lake St. Louis and keeping the temperature down just slightly. South of the city here on L'Ile Perrot I reached 15C at 5pm, while St Anicet beat their record high reaching 15C (11/1994). Other notable highs yesterday were Toronto at 16.7C (16.7/1987) and Ottawa at 11.7C (11.1/1974). The normal high for Montreal for March 8 is 0C. Keep in mind on this date in the winter of 1970/1971 Montreal still had 100cm of snow on the ground, actual depth not piled up, those were feet high and would not melt until well into the summer that year.

Today will be another warm day for Montreal, the temperature has already been as high as 10C at the airport but has since settled down to 8C and currently I am showing 12C. The record for today of 10.8C set in 2000 should easily be surpassed. It will be the last warm day in this current spell as a strong cold front is over central Ontario this morning and will approach southern Quebec this evening. In advance of the front we will have a cloudy day with very warm temperatures and gusty southwest winds. Those winds never made it to the surface in Montreal yesterday but they should today reaching speeds of 60km/h by noon. Showers, some rather heavy, will develop late this afternoon and taper to flurries overnight as the temperature plunges from record highs down to nearly -5C by morning. Needless to say any water accumulation and light snowfall will freeze on roads so travel with great caution overnight and Friday morning. Friday will be partly cloudy, breezy and much cooler at 1C with flurries at times.

You have to love spring, if you don't like the weather just wait a few hours!

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