Spring Finally Arrives But It Won’t Feel That Way Until The Weekend
Posted March 20, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After a winter of roller coaster extremes, it seems only appropriate that the first day of spring should be colder than the last week of winter. The new season arrived at 7:44am Friday, as the long and snowy winter of 2008-2009 finally came to an end.
But as you stepped out the door in the morning, it didn’t feel much like the warmer season was here yet. Temperatures at sunrise hovered around -5C with a wind chill making it feel closer to -11. The norm for this time of year is 6C, but we’ll be lucky to get to just 3C late in the afternoon, and the winds may make it feel chillier than that most of the day.
It follows an amazing stretch of March Break weather, highlighted by sunshine and temperatures that have soared into the double digits. The good news is that Old Man Winter is sneaking out of town quietly, with more warmth on the way.
Readings rebound on Saturday and Sunday to 8C, and while there’s another cool down coming for Monday and Tuesday, a high pressure system will ensure it’s at least sunny all four days.
Temperatures should be back to 10C by the middle of next week, although the returning warmth could bring some rain with it.
Friday marks the vernal equinox, a day when the sun crosses directly over the Earth’s equator. It’s one of two times a year when day and night are almost exactly the same length, although there’s usually a bit more of the former than the latter. We actually got 12 hours and 7 minutes of daylight on this first day of spring.
Read more about the vernal equinox here
And that old cliché about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb certainly wasn’t true this year. We normally see about 19 centimetres of snow in March. So far, we’ve had less than a centimetre, and there are no flakes in the immediate forecast future.
Most winter weary GTA residents are hoping it stays that way into next month. But the coming of spring doesn’t completely guarantee the end of winter weather. In 2002, it snowed on May 24th, the Victoria Day long holiday weekend – usually thought of as the unofficial start of summer.
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Going to extremes: The bizarre winter of 2008-09
