VIDEO: The constant brutal weather may not feel good to you, but it’s good for everything else. Mark Carcasole reports.
TORONTO – Some of us in the Greater Toronto Area might be tired of the long and frigidly cold winter weather but believe it or not, there are benefits to this deep freeze.
Nature may be the biggest benefactors of the sub-zero temperatures.
The cold weather creates a better hibernation environment for small mammals and better soil for plant life.
It also helps eliminate warm weather pests like mosquitoes and ticks, including invasive insect species that destroy our trees.
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“The cold weather will eventually get to their hidden eggs or their over-wintering areas and they will essentially just freeze,” said Raply Toninger, Manager Restoration & Environmental Monitoring, Toronto And Region Conservation Authority.
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From a scientific point of view, the cold temperature delays the spawning of the bugs and bacteria that give farmers a hard time in the summer.
The delayed thaw also keeps the soil for crops moist, a great benefit to cows which live comfortably in their barn at 3 degrees Celsius.
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“These cows are ice age animals. They like cold weather. They actually thrive and produce more milk in the cold weather,” according to Armstrong Manor Farm owner Philip Armstrong.
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When it comes to an urban planning point of view, cities and communities also get a break with the cold snaps.
A longer, slower thaw actually gives the city’s infrastructure more time to drain away all that water.
City officials say when it happens too quickly it gets overloaded, and that’s when floods can occur.
-with a report from Mark Carcasole
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