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Nearly every spot in the country is unseasonably warm this December
Photo by Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
It was only two years ago this month that parts of Canada were being hammered by storms, snow dumps and temperatures as low as -55 Celsius. This year, the vast majority of Canada’s 40 million people not only spent the holidays without snow, but they were reasonably able to go outside in a T-shirt.
Below, a quick guide to how shockingly warm it is right now.
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Canada is a big country, and unseasonable weather isn’t usually this uniform. Albertans might experience the occasional snow-free Christmas, but it usually happens as Atlantic Canadians are buried under a few feet of snow.
But for Christmas 2023, virtually every corner of Canada was touched by conditions warmer than anything seen in decades. Vancouver hit a high of 14 Celsius on Dec. 27, shattering a record that had stood since 1986. On the opposite end of the country, Labrador entered the holidays plagued by mud and flooding caused by an unseasonable thaw. In the Labrador community of Mary’s Harbour, a Dec. 19 high of 7.7 Celsius was the warmest ever recorded for that date.
Ottawa — which can occasionally boast of being the world’s coldest national capital — hit a high of 6 Celsius on Boxing Day. Compare that to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar — often a competitor for the rank of coldest capital city — right now, where temperatures are easily dropping to -20 every night.
Photo by Mike Hensen/Postmedia
On Dec. 15, Toronto recorded a high of 13.2 Celsius — the highest-ever for that date since record-keeping began in 1840.
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And all across Alberta, it was basically spring, with some communities already banning New Year’s Eve fireworks due to the risk of wildfire. Lethbridge hit 14.4 Celsius on Dec. 22. The mountain town of Jasper has been hitting daily highs well above freezing. The Weather Network noted Thursday that Edmonton has gone the entire winter without the temperature once dropping below -15 Celsius.
Naturally, all of these above-zero December temperatures have been utterly ruinous for winter sports. The skating rink at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square had to be closed early on Wednesday after skaters found themselves sloshing through pooled water.
The Manitoba ice fishing season — which is usually able to kick off in the first week before Christmas — has been pushed into January. And the same is true of a popular Quebec ice fishing spot at Sainte-Anne-de-la-Perade, just west of Quebec City.
Photo by DEREK BALDWIN/Postmedia
And from B.C. to Ontario to Quebec, virtually all of Canada’s major ski hills are running at diminished capacity. The ski publication Powder Magazine recently covered the “depressing” pre-Christmas conditions at Whistler Blackcomb, which included rain, visible grass and plenty of mud. Over in Ontario, a similar report from the Blue Mountain ski resort found temperatures sitting at 9 Celsius on Boxing Day, with any “natural” snowfall long gone and hills entirely reliant on artificial snow.
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If there’s some solace, it’s that summer sports this year were allowed to continue well past their usual end points. In the first week of December, Calgary got so warm that two golf courses reopened.
All else being equal, this current warm spell will likely end up saving lives. Aside from some heavy fog around Ontario, the Christmas travel season was largely spared its usual offering of blizzards, black ice and resultant auto crashes. And all these snow-free days almost certainly means that some Canadians who otherwise would have died from a snow shovelling heart attack are still alive.
Photo by Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
But one of the darker sides of Canada’s mid-winter heat wave is that it has precipitated a not-insubstantial number of fatalities due to thin ice. A Calgary man drowned on Christmas Day after falling through the thin ice of the Bow River. Four Ottawa teenagers broke through thin ice on the Rideau River on Dec. 27, and as of press time one is dead and another remains missing. Near Edmonton, in Lac Ste. Anne County, a family of three died after their side-by-side went through the ice.
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The territories are still reliably being hit with snow and ice … but just barely. At a time of year when -20 Celsius is routine, parts of the Canadian subarctic are being hit with temperatures more in keeping with Montreal in April.
Whitehorse, Yukon is set to briefly peak above freezing on Saturday. Yellowknife, NWT is so cold in December that its highest-ever temperature for that month was 2.8 Celsius, which it hit in 1944. So when the city hit 2 Celsius in mid-December, it was only the second non-freezing December day in more than 20 years.
And even Iqaluit might be as warm as -3 Celsius over the weekend, just the latest anomaly of a winter that has seen the Nunavut capital occasionally posting warmer temperatures than New York City.
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