A Slight and Brief Warming

Lynx in a cold storm, mostly AI with some windy help from AC

These are momentous days because, for two consecutive days, the temperature is rising above the freezing point, which of course is 0C or 32F. (From here on in this posts, I’ll just the C stats.) It has seemed like a long time since the mercury rose this high, so I did a little sleuthing and found myself on the Weather and Climate site, specifically looking at Ottawa.

According to Weather and Climate, we last edged over the freezing line by a mere degree on February 01. It has seemed so cold for so long that I am surprised that it happened at all this month. I checked back farther and found that the previous temperature above freezing occurred on January 27, also by just a single degree. I remind you that these were the high temperatures of the day, which could have lasted for just a short while.

In total, over the first two months of the year, we've had only six days that edged that slightly above freezing, the two warmest days reaching the exalted heights of 2.1, and one of those two days was way back at the very beginning of January.

The very coldest temperature was -23.8 on February 02, with the day before coming in second at -22.5. The coldest day in January was just a couple of days earlier than those:  -22.3 on January 30. Basically, the last week of January and the first week of February were extremely cold, but it has pretty well been very cold for almost two months. 

Moving on from highs and lows to average daily temperatures (high temp + low temp ÷  2), we find that the average daily temperature has not exceeded 0 since January 01. The coldest average was -17.4 on Feb 1. In the first 21 days of this month, 17 days experienced temperatures below the normal daily average. In January half of the days were above average and half below, so that was pretty typical, but the February cold has been quite something.

I am posting this today, February 24, because I knew from the forecast that the temperature should climb to 4C today but was surprised that it became almost that warm yesterday, which was more than what was forecasted. At this point, 4 degrees seems almost subtropical, but beginning Friday, we will go back into the freezer, and we shall remain there at least through the first week of March.