It won’t be record-breaking, but temperatures in London will reach double digits on Friday.
Environment Canada is forecasting a high of 11 C with a mix of sun and cloud, but don’t put your winter coat away just yet because the mild temperatures won’t last long.
According to the weather reporting agency, rain will end in the morning, then cloudy with a 60 per cent chance of drizzle before a mix of sun and cloud in the afternoon.
“We are spiking mild Friday, but it’s not a record. Back in 1984, this date recorded 15 C and I’m pretty sure we’re not going to get that,” said 980 CFPL weather specialist John Wilson.
“The warm air will be brief. We’ll start to drop pretty sharply and we’ll get back to just below normal for the next few days, and maybe just above normal for New Year’s Eve at 2 C,” he said.
Wilson said the reason it’s so mild is because the storm system coming through is tracking differently than usual.
“This storm is out of the Midwest U.S., cutting up toward Lake Superior in northern Ontario. That means it’s pulling warm air out ahead of it,” said Wilson.
“Since it’s heading northward or north-eastward, it’s acting more like a system does in November when they use that track quite a bit,” he said.
“By this time, usually systems are coming at us from northwest or west, and we get stuck on their colder sides. Not this one, we’re on its warm, wet side.”
The forecast is calling for a low of -1 C with a wind chill of -7 C overnight Friday and 2 centimetres of snow on the ground by Saturday morning.
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While it’ll be a nice break from the cold, mild temperatures could spell disaster for Boler Mountain.
“If it’s warm and windy, that can start to melt a lot of snow or if we’re into a thunderstorm or that type of thing, but production snow is a very durable product,” said Marty Thody with the management team at Boler Mountain.
“We’re still at a pretty thick snow pack, so it would take several days [of rain and warm weather] to start to really do some serious damage or to really take the snow back down to where we couldn’t recover from it.”
Thody said with the limited temperatures and time they’ve had to make snow, they’ve only been able to go out onto the west hill.
He said they just need a few more days of subzero temperatures to get the west hill and tubing open.
“It’s probably very difficult to believe, but conditions are great and it’s so pretty and so beautiful out here. It’s like a little winter wonderland,” said Thody.
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