December in Thunder Bay the warmest on record
CBC
Few of those who experienced December of 2023 in northwestern Ontario will forget it.
It was a green Christmas in many communities, including Thunder Bay, and it often felt more like spring than winter.
Nowhere in sight were the snow storms and bone chilling temperatures the month can be known for.
It was all very odd.
So it shouldn't be a huge surprise that December of 2023 was also one for the weather history books.
Gerald Cheng is a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
He said the last month of 2023 was anything but normal.
"Well, if we look at Thunder Bay, what's extraordinary is that we have now the warmest December," Cheng told CBC News on Dec. 29. "We are sitting at the average high of December so far as 2.7 C."
"But this is now the record, breaking the old record of zero set back in 2015."
Cheng said Environment Canada predicted earlier in December it was going to be an abnormal winter due to El Niño. El Niño is the warming of the ocean surface or above-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
The last record breaking December for Thunder Bay – back in 2015 – was also an El Niño year, he noted.
The warm weather in December was matched with a noticeable lack of snow.
The total monthly precipitation for Thunder Bay in December was 22.7 mm, well below the normal 37.5 mm, said Cheng.
Much of that precipitation fell as rain, not snow. "Obviously there's a deficit," said Cheng about the lack of snow. "But first things first. The temperatures have to cooperate and right now that's being an issue."
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