T.O. Shatters Another Warm Winter Record Mark
Posted January 5, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The city officially broke the old high of 10.1 – set on January 5, 1997 – in the morning, when the mercury hit 11C.
But did you know that the early hours you slept through also represented the warmest January night in the history of Toronto?
The thermometer only plunged to 8 degrees between 3-5am, making it another one for the record books.
The warm weather is great for most of us, but it’s driving some people crazy and is costing a few businesses a lot of money.
The worst hit are the folks who work at Blue Mountain in Collingwood. There is so little snow and so few customers the ski hill resort has been forced to close down in the middle of the season and lay off 1,300 employees.
It should re-open January 10th but the workers won’t be back on the job for at least three weeks.
It’s also been a drag for hockey player Michael Nunziata, whose family generally sets up their own playing surface for the winter. “I’m, like, mad because I can’t play on the rink anymore,” he grumps.
His father John doesn’t quite know what to tell his son. “It’s a big part of growing up, backyard rinks and skating on the Humber River,” he muses. “These are now things of the past.”
Even tourists are being left in the lurch by the thermometer’s perch. What were they expecting when they arrived here? “Very cold,” reveals Yogesh Lodha, who’s here from India. “We could not move out of the house without wearing jackets.”
His friends packed heavy clothes for their trip to Toronto, but they’re still in the suitcase. And to make matters worse, they had to buy new garments to fit the season.
Still, not everyone is quite so upset. “I like it. I’ll be back,” concedes American visitor Bruce Hoppes. “A nice city.” Would he return if he’d been buried by a blizzard? “Probably not,” he laughs.
Still, despite the strange turn, this was not the warmest winter day ever in the G.T.A. That record goes back to the 17.6 we hit at Pearson International Airport on January 13, 2005 – just two short years ago.
But what Mother Nature gives she also takes. The next day, the high was -10.3C, a 27-degree drop in 24 hours. The day after that, it plunged to -24C.
For the all time winter record though, you have to travel down to Niagara Falls. They had an incredible 19.4C on January 25, 1950. And that’s not even the strangest part of the story. It turns out January 25th is traditionally considered by forecasters to be the coldest day of the year.
As for the low snow totals that are killing local skiers, Toronto had only 1.6 centimetres of flakes in all of last month – the lowest since records were started in 1840.
And those who complain about all the rain that’s come along with all these unseasonable conditions should stop griping.
While Environment Canada admits a normal year wouldn’t bring endless snow, if all the drops that fell during December had come down in the frozen form, we would have been shoveling out of 62.4 centimetres of the stuff.
Which kind of makes what we have now a big relief.
But before you get too comfortable and prepare to call off winter altogether, there’s one more reminder of things past you should know about.
It came in 2001-2002, which records reveal is the closest we’ve ever come to the kind of winter we’re having now.
People dumped the heavy winter clothes and basked in the warmth of the jet stream from the U.S., and most believed we’d never see any significant accumulation of the white powder.
And we didn’t – until the May 24th weekend, when it suddenly turned cold and began snowing, ruining the Victoria Day plans for millions on what many consider the first holiday of the summer.
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