Warm weather keeping Canada dry

2012 may go down as the year that Winnipeg was forced to import its snow.

In an incident so unusual it even got picked up by Reuters, Manitoba's capital city, normally quite adept at producing its own frozen precipitation, had to ship in machine-made flakes from a winter recreation area in order to fill the flurry quota for this year's Festival du Voyageur.

The festival, a ten-day province-wide event, relies on the area's typical February snow bank surplus for its famous snow carvings. Throughout the Voyageur's 43-year history, there has only been one other winter in which organizers needed to order a truckload of fake flakes.

But festival spokesperson Emili Bellefleur said many locals were celebrating, not ruing the root cause.

"People refer to Winnipeg as Winterpeg so they expect it to be really cold, but everyone is really happy about the warm weather," she told the news agency. "We're going to take it, you know?"

Though certain parts of Canada remain as cold and icy as ever, many of the country's cities have recorded some of the mildest winter temperatures in recent memory.

Environment Canada meteorologist Natalie Hassell explains the phenomenon, at least in Winnipeg, as a "flip-flop in air pressure patterns" which has funneled warmer southwest air across the Prairies.

And it's not just the grain-growing provinces that appear to have been affected. The Hamilton Spectator reports Ontario's maple syrup production is already well ahead of schedule.

"Compared to normal years, this is early," Todd Leuty, an agroforestry specialist with the Ontario government, told the paper. "Some of the producers out there who have been at this a long time, they checked back in their records and it was 20 years ago that they were tapping this early."

The milder-than-normal temperatures have accelerated trees into "late winter mode," a time during which sap flows up through the trunks to start bud production.

Although there's a risk the early production could result in a shorter production season, the warmer weather has so far triggered a tasty side effect: "I've heard the syrup that has been made is really good — a nice, light syrup," Leuty added.

Out east, the temperatures have resulted in some spare change for Nova Scotia's municipalities.

As the CBC notes, Halifax Regional Municipality has spent 62 per cent of its snow-plowing budget, while 100 km west, Lunenburg has only had to shell out $27,000 of its $121,500 plow allotment.

A CBC meteorologist pointed out that last year at this time, Halifax's Stanfield International Airport already measured 169.5 cm of snow. This year's paltry count boasts a mere 78 cm.

Meanwhile, city crews primed for snow plowing have had to keep themselves busy with tasks like graffiti removal, trash collection, and filling potholes — already getting a head start on the spring workload.