Winter 2006-2007: A Look Back
Posted March 20, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After all that shovelling and all that shivering, it’s finally here – the start of spring.
The season when we finally escape the snow and the cold is famed in song and story and much anticipated in this part of the world. It officially arrives at 8:07pm Tuesday night.
There’s no such thing as a truly good winter for most of us but this one will go down not only in the record books but in our memories as being especially strange.
Here’s a look back as we bid a not-so-fond farewell to the winter of 2006-2007.
Despite the fact it wasn’t really winter yet, the folks in Fort Erie and Buffalo had good reason to think their calendars were wrong. Areas in the Niagara region were hit with a massive snowstorm that dumped up to 30 centimetres of snow in some places.
Power was out for days in many homes, as people attempted to dig out and survive what looked like an early and long winter.
Little did they know what was to come.
As GTA residents wondered when the first flakes would hit here, it wasn’t snow that proved an early problem but wind. Big breezes of up to 90 kilometres an hour blanketed the city on the weekend before Halloween, bringing down power lines, leaving thousands in the dark and damage in some places.
The first truly big storm of the year paralyzes cottage country as Toronto escapes yet again. A blast carrying 15 centimetres of snow caused countless crashes on northern roads, including one near Orillia involving a school bus.
It’s now mid-November and instead of shovelling, we’re pulling out the umbrellas. With temperatures staying on the mild side, the problem isn’t snow but rain.
A drenching storm briefly had officials thinking about closing the DVP over flooding fears. There were also worries about overflowing waters all over the city, as fallen leaves blocked catch basins, turning some roads into lakes.
By mid-afternoon, the city had already received 30 millimetres of precipitation, breaking a November 16th record of 24.2 mm set back in 1981.
By this point in the year, not only were we wondering where winter was, but if Mother Nature had lost her sense of direction.
As the GTA continued to bask in temperatures way above normal, British Columbia got hit with the kind of weather we were expecting.
Between 20 and 50 centimetres of snow fell on the west coast province, leaving them totally unprepared for such a huge emergency.
It was a record setter they didn’t want. More snow fell in a single week in B.C. than in the past decade.
With winter raging all around us, the GTA gets another soaking rain, high winds and more power outages – but still no real snow. Much of the province is under a wind warning, with gusts from 50-80 kilometres creating more headaches.
It’s now a week before Christmas and it’s really getting weird. Not only won’t it be a white one, it won’t even be a cold one. People are out playing golf in balmy 13C weather, part of the El Nino effect. And only merchants were complaining, noting the warmth was killing their sales and keeping people out of stores at what should have been the busiest shopping time of the year.
And no one knew quite what to wear. Some were out in shorts. Others dressed in parkas. It would be a while yet before they’d need them in earnest.
Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day. Mother Nature’s present – a huge snowstorm that was supposed to hit here eased by us, as temperatures stayed above freezing and brought more rain. Which meant the only White Christmas we saw was that old movie playing on TV.
If Scrooge were a ski hill operator, he would have said “Bah Humbug” to the weather. With the mild conditions firmly in force, there was no snow and no skiing to be found anywhere in Southern Ontario. Eventually, some resorts up north would be forced to lay off employees, waiting for a turn in the weather. It was still a long way off.
It’s the New Year, but the same old weather story. It was so warm out that plants and animals were becoming confused. So were many humans, out golfing in 11C weather, just three days after the start of a new calendar year.
The day we still talk about. Toronto broke an all-time weather record when the mercury hit 11C. It was also the warmest night in history for that date, with temperatures falling to just 8C.
While we continued to enjoy their weather, residents in B.C. were miserable. Maybe nothing summed up how bad things were than the day the roof fell in at B.C. Place. An accumulation of sleet was to blame.
The day reality finally set in. The first big storm of the winter hit in the middle of the month, leaving snow and ice in its wake. It came with 10 hours of sleet, forcing people to try and scrape off their car windows the next morning. There were scores of accidents, including a jackknifed tractor trailer on the 401.
Once winter finally arrived, it decided to stay for a while. What would be a continual refrain was heard throughout the city, with the first Cold Weather Alert of the season issued. There would be many more extreme ones to come.
What experts call ‘dangerous cold’ hits the GTA, making a memory of those record breaking temperatures we had just 20 days ago. On what’s regarded as traditionally the coldest day of the year, the thermometer plunged to -11C with bitter wind chills closer to -30.
A freezing rain storm led to more than 500 accidents across the GTA as the long absent winter tightened its grip on the area. But it was good news for ski country, which finally recovered after a long layoff.
The groundhogs in all the major locations – including Wiarton Willie – all predict an early spring. All were wrong.
As one cold weather alert follows another, the GTA reaches a new nadir with the coldest day of the year. Frostbite can set in on exposed flesh in mere minutes, as wind chills make it feel like -30 or colder.
In a classic case of ‘be careful what you wish for’, cottage country – which had skiers complaining about a lack of snow not long before – gets hit with an endless wave of the white powder.
Lake effect and other disturbances combined to create snowstorms that just won’t stop, turning the great white north into the real thing.
The worst storm of the year hits the GTA bringing 10-15 centimetres of snow and cold, raw conditions. But it’s Hamilton that fares the worst, getting clobbered by the disturbance, which leaves as much as 70 centimetres on the ground there. Oakville residents struggle to dig out from at least 30 cm.
After a month that featured some of the coldest consecutive days in decades, March roars in with an ice storm from the U.S.
It leaves roads a slippery mess, cancels travel plans at Pearson and closes schools. Oakville and Hamilton get hit hard again and Toronto Hydro is left scrambling to restore power to thousands, after tree limbs come down with the weight of the ice. Many would be in the dark and cold for days.
In what may be the most memorable moment of the winter of 2007, the Gardiner Expressway and parts of Front St. West are closed to pedestrians and traffic as ice falling off the CN Tower creates a huge hazard.
It takes several days and a crew surreptiously thinning it away under cover of darkness to get things back to normal
March Break ends and so does our cold spell. After a week that saw temperatures soar to 14C then back below freezing, the city looks forward to what most hope will be the final blast of winter. It comes with snow on Monday and bitter wind chills on Tuesday, but the promise of temperatures near 18C by Thursday.
