Cold snap to grip Quebec into March, climatologist warns

The bitter cold isn’t going away anytime soon, says Environment and Climate Change Canada.

The bitter cold isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, a climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada says even March is shaping up to be colder than normal.

In a recent interview, David Phillips said the forecast for February shows the cold will likely persist until at least the end of the month. Looking at the past few weeks, he said that will mean below-normal or below-freezing temperatures for 44 consecutive days — a stretch he called “near record.”

“We’re a little beyond the halfway point of winter, and yet we just seem to be entrenched in the cold and the snow,” Phillips said. “It’s the look and feel of winter that has really taken hold. I think we just weren’t quite ready for it.”

The climatologist noted that Quebec saw the third-warmest fall in 78 years, making the transition to winter jarring.

“I just don’t see any warming up. Get used to it, because it’s going to continue. And certainly, two weeks from now, people will be just absolutely ticked off. It begins to wear down psychologically.”

Phillips said Quebec also got about 25 per cent more snow between November and January than normal.

“But what really got me with the snow was the frequency of the snow and the number that really shocked me was the number of days with snow,” Phillips explained.

“There’s been 93 days since November 1st, and we’ve had measurable snow on 47 of those days, plus a trace of snow in the air on 20 more. So when you look at it, about three-quarters of the days in the last 90-odd days have seen snow.”

According to Phillips, January was the coldest in four years in Montreal, with below-freezing temperatures for more than half the month.

“This week, midweek, it’s going to kind of get a little bit more humane, highs of -5 C. It’s still below freezing. There’s no melting going on. And then after that, it gets colder. I mean, it really is. We may not have reached the coldest moment of the entire winter so far,” he said.

However, by the second week of February, he forecast’s temperatures lows around -26 C with daytime highs between -11 and -18 C.

“That polar vortex is not sitting up in the Arctic. It’s sitting over Northern Ontario, central Quebec, and is just pushing this cold arctic air right down. It’s air that is thick and dense. It’s like molasses. It just oozes along the ground and fills all the nooks and crannies and doesn’t leave you.”

Phillips added that Fred la Marmotte will definitely see his shadow on Monday, predicting a longer winter season this year.