Kingston’s mild winter no reason to panic, expert says

Winter in Kingston kicked off with the city’s annual Santa Claus parade last December.

It saw plenty of festive cheer and all the signs of the season — except the snow.

This winter in Kingston has been an unusually mild one.

“The last nine months, actually, have been the warmest months sort of on record. We’ve been setting records steadily,” said Warren Mabee, director of the Queen’s University Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy.

For the team at Downtown Kingston, an uneasy winter makes planning outdoor events all the more difficult.

“Because of what’s happening with the environment and the lack of snow, or the inconsistency of snow and ice, a lot of things that we used to do for FebFest we cannot do,” Downtown Kingston executive director Marijo Cuerrier said.

It’s not just FebFest, Kingston’s annual winter festival, that suffered either.

Cuerrier recalled that in 2022, the BIA had set up a number of themed skate nights at the Market Square rink and had to cancel each one due to the mild weather.

She said that the way they plan winter events simply had to change with the times and the weather.

“Just thinking outside of the box and making sure it still has that Canadiana, winter feel,” she added.

Why have the once frigid winters of Kingston gone warm?

While climate change is certainly part of it, Mabee says it’s a combination of factors.

“Climate change is happening, things are getting warmer, average temperatures are moving up. But, in addition to that, it was an El Niño year, which means that this is a year that those warm waters in the Pacific are sort of pushing up against North and South America,” Mabee said.

He said another big contributor to Kingston’s winter weather, or lack thereof, is lake ice coverage.

“Part of what makes Kingston so unique, its waterfront presence, is also part of what makes the winters so unpredictable.

The amount of ice coverage on the lake has a direct link to the weather in Kingston.

According to the U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Great Lakes ice coverage in 2024 so far falls greatly below the historical average.

Despite this, Mabee says it’s no reason to panic.

“I think it’s probably an outlier this year, I mean, we’re experiencing warming but this is not the kind of warming where we expect it’ll go up five degrees within a year,” Mabee said.