January 2009 summary

The coldest January in 15 years with lots of snow but no rain

Well that was a cold one, although January has 31 days like a lot of other months, it seems that this one just wouldn't end. The first part of January wasn't actually that cold, but one deep freeze between the 14th and 16th and another smaller one between the 24th and 26th put the overall temperature almost 4 degrees below average for the month.

The made it the coldest month (and of course the coldest January) since January of 1994 and the 6th coldest January since records in the area began back in 1915.

For the entire month we had a grand total of just over 3 hours where the temperature was above zero between 11:45 am and 3:00 pm on the 23rd. The low of -28.8 °C on the 15th was the lowest temperature we have seen at the UW weather station since January 28, 2005 when it was -30.5 °C.

Looking at the total precipitation we had 49.2 mm putting it below the average of 64.4 mm, but just enough to put it in the average range for precipitation. The snow total of 62.5 cm was above the average of 43.5 cm, however the reason we were low on the total precipitation is that we didn't have any rain where we would usually expect about 28 mm.

The total snowfall for the snowfall season (going back to the fall) is 202 cm, this puts us about 85 cm above where we were at this time last year and only 55.5 cm from the record total snowfall from last season.

Environment Canada prediction of temperature for the month: Average
Actual Temperature: Below average

Summary for January 2009:
Maximum Temperature 1.6 °C
Minimum Temperature -28.8 °C
Average Daily High Temperature -5.7 °C (Long term average -3.1 °C)
Average Daily Low Temperature -16.0 °C (Long term average -11.1 °C)
Total Precipitation 49.2 mm (Long term average 64.4 mm)

(Long term averages based on 1971-2000 data for the Waterloo Wellington Airport)

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