Northwest Palms

The Coldest Winter on Record?

According to Environment Canada, in response to an e-mail I sent last June, the spring of 2008 was the coldest spring ever recorded at the Victoria Airport:

"Thank you for contacting Environment Canada.

I had a quick look at the Victoria monthly mean temperatures for the length of records available for Victoria Int'l airport. And indeed it appears that the spring of 2008 is the coldest on record. I have used preliminary data from the archives of Environment Canada available online at: http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/canada_e.html. As you mentioned, the temperature is about 2 degrees below normal for Victoria airport. The next coldest spring was 1955 were the springtime temperature was about 15.6 C.

I hope this helps. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

>Sincerely,
>
>
>Gérard Morin
>Climate Technician/Technicien Climatologique Meteorological Service of Canada - Atlantic Operations Service Météorologique du Canada - Opérations de l'Atlantique Environment Canada/ Environnement Canada"

I sent a follow up question in early January, asking if December 2008 was the coldest December on record. It wasn't, but it was definitely a lot colder than normal:

"My informal stats show a mean temp of 9.5 for the year which is not even in the top 10 coldest years

1955 had a mean of 8.4
1950 had a mean of 8.5
1972 & 1985 had a mean of 8.8
1948 and 1971 had a mean of 8.9

I wonder who gave him stats on Mar 21 to June 21st.
I track seasons very broadly - using Mar, Apr and May as a proxy for spring.
That gave me a 3 month mean of 8.2 - the 13th coolest on record. 1955 had
a mean of 6.9 --brrrr

Anne McCarthy
Environment Canada, c/o Pacific Forestry Centre, 506 Burnside Rd W
Victoria BC Canada V8Z 1M5 ph 250 363 0410 fx 250 363 0405

Environnement Canada
c/o Centre de foresterie du Pacifique, 506 chemin Burnside ouest Victoria
Colombie-Britannique Canada V8Z 1M5"

I just sent them another e-mail asking if the winter of 2008/09 was the coldest. I won't be surprised if it was. What a miserable stretch we've had to endure. I'll let you know.

The following thread was started by leapfrog - victoria on March 21, 2009 at 8:10 am PST

According to this morning's Global news the 2008/09 winter was 2C to 3C colder than average and David Jones advised to get ready for colder winters (on average) in the future because of the PDO. So if you are faced with a choice between a Waggie and Butia, Waggie is probably a better bet with regard to a long survival.

The above followup was added by Vlad Pomajzl, Saltspring on March 21, 2009 at 8:36 am PST.

PDO, is this "The Pacific Decadal Oscillation"?...could this also have some influences for us in northern europa? probably it has....???

The above followup was added by Kristof p on March 21, 2009 at 11:17 am PST.

Kristof you should google for the information regarding the PDO - there is plenty of it, some of it conflicting. I believe the major impacts are in Western North America but I am sure secondary impacts can be found elsewhere. This is a pretty good site with a short explanation/description:

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

Note what they say about the word we tend to use for longer-term averages ('normal') in the last sentence. Note also that the Pacific climate variability is impacted by other regimes, hence the reluctance of the climatologists to come out with a long-term forecasts.

The above followup was added by Vlad Pomajzl, Saltspring on March 22, 2009 at 8:04 am PST.