Winter in Norfolk and neighboring Brantford-Brant has certainly been milder than normal, resulting in several weather records being broken.
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According to an Environment Canada meteorologist, two factors that contributed to that are climate change and El Nino.
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The latter occurs when the waters of the Pacific Ocean are warmer than normal off the coast of South America, which affects wind patterns and weather patterns globally resulting in somewhat milder-than-normal winters.
“The predictions for El Nino were that we’d likely have a strong El Nino and we’ve seen that to be the case,” said Trudy Kidd, warning preparedness meteorologist at Environment Canada. “When it comes to climate change itself, we do expect temperatures – not just in the winter but year-round – to be warmer. It’s not going to be the case every single day, but the trend is a warming one.”
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For Brantford-Brant, no daytime high temperature records were set in December 2023, but December 9 came close at 12.6 C compared to the record of 12.8 C dating back to 1924.
In Norfolk, the high reached 13.1 C that day, nearing the record of 15.6 C set in 1966.
A warm spell early in February resulted in a new record for daytime high at 13.5 C in Brantford on February 9, smashing the previous record of 10.5 C in 1990. Norfolk had a record-setting high of 14.5 C that day.
Weather data for Brantford-Brant dates to 1876, and 1888 for Norfolk.
“One thing we know with climate change is that not only does it increase the daytime high but also the overnight low,” Kidd noted. “We are seeing that it increases the overnight low even more so than the daytime high.”
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Brantford set records for overnight lows on December 9 (9.8 C), December 27 (6 C) and December 28 (5.1 C) that stood since 1946, 1973, and 1940 respectively, and February 9, 2024 (6.3 C) compared with 2.5 C in 1980.
Looking at months as a whole — the mean temperatures that include day and night temperatures averaged for the whole month – December 2023 was the second warmest month on record in Brantford at 2.5 C, compared with the record of 3.2 C set in 2015.
January’s mean temperature was –3 C, higher than the usual –6 C.
“February normally has an average temperature of –4.3 C,” Kidd said, adding that Norfolk averages would be similar. “It’s not over but so far we’ve recorded 0.3 as the average and we are currently the fourth warmest, but this will change.”
So, what lies ahead as we get near to spring?
“So far, our model guidance is indicating that the warm trend will continue at least in the short term and going into March as well,” said the meteorologist, noting that the end of March is expected to be cooler than normal.
“It’s only February, and March is known for having storms that create impacts across southern Ontario,” Kidd observed. “It’s certainly not over yet. People need to keep their eye on their reliable weather source for information. There’s more to come.”
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