April 2009 Summary

A very wet month with average temperature

Just like March the temperature was about 0.8 degrees above average in April, but again it wasn't quite hot enough to call it an above average month. Even with two days over 25 °C and only a couple of really cold days, the overall temperature was still within the average range.

Also interesting is that the last day the temperature was below zero was back on April 17th, now I'm not suggesting that you can start to plan your annuals, but if we don't see frost again this year it would be the earliest last frost in at least the last 10 years (if we don't see zero in May I'll look it up historically).

And in UW weather station news, the temperature went over 20 °C at 1:30 on April 18th, making Ross Schneider the winner of this year's weather station contest, with Michael Theunissen coming in second.

The 128.6 mm of precipitation we saw during the month made it the wettest April since 1996 and the 5th wettest of all time since records began in the area back in 1914. Almost all of the precipitation came during 5 days of the month: 29.4 mm on the 3rd, 15.7 mm on the 6th, 18.0 mm on the 20th, 18.8 mm on the 25th, and 25.0 mm on the 30th. The 10.5 cm of snow for the month was a little bit more than the 7.8 cm we get on average.

We are again having a wet year with 326.4 mm of precipitation so far compared to the average of 262.2 mm.

Although historically we have had snow in May, I'm going to call an end to the 2008-09 snowfall season. The snowfall season ended with a whimper, with very little snow after the end of January, but if you remember back to last fall and the early winter we thought the snow would never end. The total snowfall was 235.0 cm which is tied for the third highest total of all time with 1942-1943 and behind both the 245.3 cm in 1923-24 and the 257.5 cm last year.

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


Summary for April 2009:
Maximum Temperature 26.1 °C
Minimum Temperature -5.4 °C
Average Daily High Temperature 12.1 °C (Long term average 11.4 °C)
Average Daily Low Temperature 1.5 °C (Long term average 0.6 °C)
Total Precipitation 128.6 mm (Long term average 76.9 mm)

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

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