May flowers

The tulips and trees are popping everywhere this morning as a light rain helps them to burst onto the scene. A weather system passing to our south has pushed an area of showers across southern Quebec including Montreal this morning. I have measured about 5mm overnight with the heaviest rain remaining south of the border. Light rain will last until the early afternoon before tapering off. Cloud cover will keep the temperatures a little cooler than yesterday in the 10C range. Skies will try to clear out tomorrow, but I think lots of clouds will remain and we may even have a few sprinkles. A warm front is expected to approach the region late in the day and try top pass across the region on Thursday. We may see some showers and thunderstorms into Friday. Temperatures are forecast to warm into the low 20's by the weekend, assuming the front clears the city.

April 23, 2012, not in Quebec, but in western Pennsylvania, as most storms missed Montreal this past winter.

Below Normal Snowfall
A good friend of mine asked me yesterday how much snow we had this past winter. My reply was none, but I really did not have an accurate figure in mind. He guessed 125cm for the season and he was not far off. I scanned the records and all I could come up with was 128cm a paltry 52 inches or so. The normal for Montreal is nearly double that at 217.5cm. The worst month of this bizarre winter was April with officially only 0.4cm of snow. The most snow fell in January with 57.6cm. I used my snow blower on the driveway maybe three times, not even one tank of gas on the machine. As far as snowstorms go, really, not too many. I found only two days with 15cm (6 inches) or more of snow, December 5 and January 12th, tied at 16cm each. Most of the early storms were more ice than snow events, and with temperatures soaring into the high 20's in March, winter 2011/2012 was a non event.