Monday, April 19, 2010

Power outage this weekend

The building containing the computer that runs the weather station website will be part of a utilities shutdown this upcoming weekend.

This may cause the weather station website to be unavailable at times, website updates will continue as soon as possible after any interruption.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Cold day on Friday

When the temperature only got up to 2.1°C on Friday, April 9th it was 6 degrees below average for that day. The last time we had a day that was that much below average was way back on January 29th when it was 8.5 degrees below.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

2010 UW weather station contest winner

Although on a day like this we are really all winners, there can only be one winner of the 2010 UW weather station contest.

This year's winner is: Thiago Bartolomei

who correctly chose a time of 1:00 pm on April 1st as the first time the temperature at the UW weather station would go above 20C and for the second year in a row we have a birthday winner!.

In second place we have:

John Jongerius.

Thanks to everybody who entered the contest, we hope you had fun with the
contest, and will enter again next year.

Once again we would like to thank The Waterloo Store who sponsored this year's prizes.

As well as taking home some cool prizes, the winners will also become
members of the Waterloo Weather Station Contest Hall of Fame.

March 2010 Summary

Warmest March in 10 years with below average precipitation and no snow


It was a very warm March with only 3 colder than average days, which all came at the end of the month. Overall it was 3.4 degrees above average, making it the warmest March since 2000 and the 6th warmest since records began in the region.

There wasn't that much precipitation overall with only 48.4 mm falling compared to an average of 70.6 mm. This continues the dry trend as we are only at 107.2 mm where we would expect 187.6 mm at this time of the year. A majority of the precipitation fell during a 3 day period between the 12th and the 14th.

But the big story is the lack of snowfall during the month, unfortunately it gets a bit difficult to directly compare to previous measurements, as the determination of snowfall amounts is a bit subjective. Although we didn't record any snow at the UW weather this March, the Environment Canada Waterloo-Wellington II station did have one day with 1.0 cm and another day with trace snowfall. You have to go back to 1946 when there were only 2 Trace amounts recorded to find a March that had less snow.

So I think we can safely say it was the lowest snowfall for March in over 60 years and at least very close to the lowest snowfall total as far as records go back in the area.

Summary for March 2010:
Maximum Temperature 17.3 °C
Minimum Temperature -13.0 °C
Average Daily High Temperature 7.9 °C (Long term average 3.5 °C)
Average Daily Low Temperature -3.3 °C (Long term average -5.6 °C)
Total Precipitation 48.4 mm (Long term average 70.6 mm)

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


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