This is where winter will be milder than usual in Canada
Weather experts are advising Canadians to get their winter boots and shovels out in preparation for a cold and stormy winter ahead. Despite the overall “classic” Canadian winter making a comeback this year, there are some areas that will be spared a bit more than other.
“Every winter you’d pick Victoria, B.C. as the mildest…and that’s going to be the case again this year, even if we expect a slightly higher chance of snowfall and temperatures near to below normal across much of B.C.,” Chris Scott, The Weather Network’s chief meteorologist said.
Moving towards the East Coast, an area of the country that is usually hit with strong storms and significant precipitation, temperatures in this region are expected to be a bit warmer for the season.
“This year, if there’s a sign one way or the other, it’s pointing towards slightly above normal temperatures,” Scott said. “We don’t want to paint the picture here that it’s a mild winter, because that won’t be the case…it’s just going to be more mild than normal.”
The Weather Network indicates that these warmer than normal temperatures will lead to more “sloppy” storms with more rain in the region.
“For a place like Moncton, we won’t see the snow banks that are above people’s heads like we saw three years ago because while we will get our snowstorms, we’ll also get these storms that have more of a slop component to them as well,” Scott said.
This “slop” component will be a result of a cycle of snow, to freezing rain, to rain and back to snow, which parts of the East Coast will see throughout the winter.
Although The Weather Network’s most recent forecast stresses that the country as a whole will see a significant amount of snow, it looks like the storms will not be consistent throughout the season.
“It’s going to be a stormy winter but it won’t be consistently stormy week after week,” Scott said. “People are just going to have to be patient and be ready because when winter strikes, it will strike hard, but then it will kind of go away and give us a bit of a break from time to time too.”
Scott and The Weather Network attribute this particular storm cycle to the La Nina winter climate pattern with colder than normal water off the coast of South America, which historically has produced stormier winters across the country.
It looks like there’s no way to escape the storm in Canada this year, but Scott does suggest that these weather patterns will create ideal temperatures south of the border.
“If you’ve got plans to go to…Arizona, Texas, Florida, maybe Myrtle Beach and South Carolina, we’re looking at a warmer than normal winter down there,” Scott said. “So that’s good news.”
