We're only three days away from the start of spring. Now normally that means about as much in Thompson as whether the groundhog sees his shadow on Groundhog Day Feb. 2; four more weeks of winter, six more weeks of winter? Who's kidding whom? How about four or six more months?
This year is different. For three consecutive days - from March 6 to 8 last week - Thompson shattered daytime high temperature records that had stood as far back as 1968, says Environment Canada meteorologist Dale Marciski in Winnipeg. That's a year after such temperature records began being collected for Thompson.
On March 6 it was 9.5 C, breaking the old record of 6.3 C set in 2000. The next day it was an incredible 11 C, breaking the March 7, 1968 previous record of 6.8 C. And on March 8, the temperature was 9.8 C, besting the old record of 8 C in 1990, Marciski says.
And here's the bonus, if there can be anything even better. We were warmer - much warmer - than Winnipeg on those record-setting days of March 6 to 8! Winnipeg was kind of chilling along at around 1 C those days. How did that happen south of the Perimeter Highway?
"Quick explanation," says Marciski. "Mild air mass across Western Canada recently. Mainly sunny over Northern Manitoba. The sunshine getting soaked up by the dark coniferous trees and then the heat radiating back from the trees to heat up the air. In Southern Manitoba lots of cloud cover and fog lately. Even if the sky clears up for awhile the sunshine just reflects off the snow-covered ground and the air doesn't heat up a great deal."
Today we're hovering around the freezing point, which is not record-breaking warmth like last week, but take some consolation in this fact; the normal daytime high today is about -5 C.
And speaking of records: Those well-known groundhog prognosticators - Punxsutawney Phil, from Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Wiarton Willie from Bruce County, Ontario, and Nova Scotia's Shubenacadie Sam, all emerged Feb. 2 into bright sunshine, but got it wrong this year in seeing their shadows and predicting six more weeks of winter.
The lone groundhog exception seems to have been Balzac Billy, from Balzac, Alta., just north of Calgary, who did not see his shadow and opted for an early spring prediction.
Dave Phillips, Canada's senior climatologist and best-known weather expert for Environment Canada from Toronto, says in fact this winter has been the warmest and driest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948
It was 4 C above normal and the driest winter on the 63-year record, with precipitation 22 per cent below normal nationally, and down 60 per cent in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. The only exception to the above normal temperatures was a small area over the southern Prairies.
"It's beyond shocking," Phillips said. Records have been shattered from "coast to coast to coast."
Phillips and other scientists are offering two main explanations for the record-breaking warmth in Canada this winter: Shrinking Arctic ice, which has thinned and retreated markedly in recent years as the polar ice cap gets smaller and smaller, and El Niño.
In the United States, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists noted last July 9 that El Niño, the periodic warming of water in the tropical Pacific Ocean caused by an intensification of monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia caused by warming of surface waters of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, which occurs every three to eight years and can affect weather around the world, has returned.
The name is from the Spanish for "the little boy" and refers to the Christ child because the phenomenon is often, but not always, first noticed around Christmas in the Pacific near South America.
The Pacific had been in what is called a neutral state, but scientists say the sea surface temperature climbed to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal along a narrow band in the eastern equatorial Pacific last June.
In addition, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center said temperatures in other tropical regions were also above normal last spring and summer, with warmer than usual readings as much as 975 feet below the ocean surface.
La Niña periods of cooling in the tropical Pacific are the opposite extreme in the natural El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle. Forecasters said they expected this El Niño to continue strengthening over the next few months and to last through next winter, which it has.
In Canada, El Niño tends not to have much influence in summer, but can have more impacts in winter, tending to split the jet stream, creating what meteorologists refer to as a "no-weather zone" with generally milder temperatures in much of the country, which has more than occurred.
Scientists expect this El Niño to end by July as ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific peaked in December and are gradually cooling again.
