Interview on Ontario Morning

I was on the CBC's Ontario Morning on July 27, 2012 talking about the warm temperatures of the last year:

Listen to the interview here.

Hottest year (12 month period) ever seen

Although we are a few days away from the end of the month, it is likely that the 12 month period which began at the start of July 2011 to the end of June 2012 will go down as the warmest in the almost 100 years of recorded weather data in the region.

Until recently the warmest 12 month period in the region happened to be the calendar year of 1998 when the average temperature was 8.98 degrees.  The last 12 months will be around 9.30 degrees depending on  how these last few days play out.  By the way the 1971-2000 average annual temperature is 6.7 degrees.

With the warm winter we had, combined with the record breaking extremely hot March puts the average for the July 2011 to June 2012 period at 9.30 degrees.  This solidly beats the old record.

The last time we had a colder than average month was back in March of 2011.

Spring 2012 Summary

The very hot and dry Spring
It was consistently warm during the Spring, enough to make it the third warmest since records began in the region behind only 1949 and 1991.  Overall it was just over 2 degrees warmer than average. 

If it wasn’t for a very wet start to June, it might have been a record dry spring.  It was still a below average Spring for precipitation with 155.8 mm compared to 221.0 mm, even with over 97 mm in the first 3 weeks of June.

Summary for Spring 2012:
Maximum Temperature 31.7 °C
Minimum Temperature -7.2 °C
Average Daily High Temperature 18.1 °C (Long term average 15.6 °C)
Average Daily Low Temperature 6.1 °C  (Long term average 4.2 °C)
Total Precipitation 155.8 mm (Long term average 221.0 mm)

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

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May 2012 Summary

Another hot and dry month

With 3 days that were more than 10 degrees hotter than average it is not surprising that overall the month was more than 3 degrees above average.  The last time we had a colder than average month was back in March of 2011 and the last time we had a May this warm was in 1998.

For the third month in a row we had below average precipitation, only 28.8 mm compared to the average of 75.7 mm for May.  In particular only 7.7 mm fell during the last half of the month.

So far this year we have had 208.6 mm of precipitation, this is far below the average of 340.2 mm.


Summary for May 2012:
Maximum Temperature 31.7°C
Minimum Temperature 1.5°C
Average Daily High Temperature 22.4°C (Long term average 18.7°C)
Average Daily Low Temperature 9.0°C (Long term average 6.4°C)
Total Precipitation 28.8 mm (Long term average75.7 mm)

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

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April 2012 Summary

A very dry April with average temperature


It was something that had never happened in the recorded weather history of our area: it was actually colder in April than it was in March.  However, April was still not colder than average, this speaks to just how incredibly warm it was during March.
 
There was a bit of hot streak in the middle of the month, but this was offset by a cooler end of the month. Overall, the temperature was 0.1 degree higher than average, thus it was certainly within the average range.

Once again it was very dry this month, only 28.9 mm compared to an average of 76.9 mm. This makes it the driest April since 1977 when we only got 25.5 mm.Of course this means we are even further behind for the annual total which stands at 179.9 mm compared to the average of 264.4 at this point in the year

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Summary for April 2012:

Maximum Temperature 22.9°C
Minimum Temperature -4.6°C
Average Daily High Temperature 11.7°C (Long term average 11.2°C)
Average Daily Low Temperature 0.2°C (Long term average 0.4°C)
Total Precipitation 28.9 mm (Long term average76.9 mm)
(Long term averages based on 1971-2000 data for the Waterloo Wellington Airport)

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Wet day to start June

The 56.7 mm of rain we got on the first day of June was almost as much as we had during all of April and May (57.7 mm).