CALGARY – February is normally the third coldest month for the city of Calgary, but not this winter.
Unless something dramatic happens with the temperature Monday, Dan Kulak, meteorologist for Environment Canada confirms that 2016 will likely be the second warmest February on record. This is according to the mean temperature-the daily high minus the daily low. As of Feb. 28, the mean temperature for the month was 1.6 degrees Celsius. The only February that was warmer was in 1977 when the mean temperature was 2.0 degrees Celsius.
READ MORE: Warm weather cooling sales for some Calgary businesses
If the 1988 Winter Olympics taught us anything, it’s that you cannot always count on snow in Calgary in February. Although it did eventually come for the Games: Environment Canada records show a total of 8.6 centimetres of snow and 4.3 millimetres of rain for that month that year.
Up until Feb. 28, Calgary still had not measured any significant snow, and only had 0.6 millimetres of rain for the entire month.
Some light snow passed through late Sunday and on Monday, but as of 9 a.m. it was still considered only trace amounts, according to Kulak. Trace amounts of moisture are considered fairly insignificant and do not alter moisture totals.
If the snow totals remain as such Monday, this will go down as being only the second February in Calgary “without snow.” There has only been one other February without snow since 1885, when statistics were first recorded. In 1999, only trace amounts of snow and rain were measured.
2016 has has a few other interesting weather phenomena: Sunday night was so foggy that Environment Canada issued a fog advisory.
Calgary usually sees 20 days of fog in a year, and this is typically a spring or fall occurrence. There has been fog observed by Environment Canada at some point during the day for for 20 days already this year.
With files from Paul Dunphy
Comments