January 2024 Summary

A gloomy and warm January with average precipitation

Apart from the usual information, this summary also sees the introduction of first version of the Soulis Memorial Weather Station gloominess index!  Each day is given a number from 1 to 10 depending on the maximum amount of sun for that day, the gloomier the day the higher the number.  Then the average for the month is then calculated.  

For January the average was 8.3 (out of 10), this compares to the 1999-2023 average of 7.1 (it has ranged between 6.5 in 2013 to 8.5 last year).  This was the second highest gloominess index in the history of the station, so it wasn’t just your imagination, there wasn’t a lot of sun last month.

Even though we had that one cold week in the middle of the month, it didn’t make up for the warmer than average temperatures the rest of the month, particularly near the end.  In fact, the low temperatures in the last week never went below the average high temperatures for those days.  With all that it is not surprising that the overall temperature was almost 3 degrees higher than average.

The total precipitation of 72.4 mm was just a little above the average of 70.9 mm.  But even with the warm temperatures, we still got 36.5 cm of snow in January, not that far off of the average of 43.7 cm.  Overall for the snowfall season we have had 46.5 cm, less than half the average of 95.3 cm for this point in the season.

Summary for January 2024:

Maximum Temperature 7.3°C
Minimum Temperature -19.5°C
Average Daily High Temperature -1.0°C (Long term average -2.4°C)
Average Daily Low Temperature -6.2°C (Long term average -10.6°C)
Total Precipitation 72.4 mm (Long term average 70.9 mm)

(Long term averages based on 1998-2022 data from the Soulis Memorial Weather Station at the University of Waterloo)