Although Environment Canada hasn’t yet released its official forecast for the winter, its senior climatologist is predicting good news for Winnipeg and southern Manitoba this season.
David Phillips told Global News that after a snow-heavy, colder-than-usual winter last year, the region may be in for a bit of a reprieve this time around.
“You get — normally in an average year — about 13 days where the temperature gets below minus 30… and you had 27 of those suckers last year. It was just cold,” Phillips said.
“You had double the amount of snow and it was one of the coldest winters on record, so clearly it won’t be a repeat of that.
“Overall, (it’ll be) shorter and I don’t think as ‘winter-like’ as we saw last year.”
Phillips said the tame start to winter Manitobans have received so far isn’t necessarily going to stick around, but on the whole, things will be a little easier in terms of extreme weather.
“The preliminary look is that December looks like it’ll be a little colder than normal — certainly not what you’ve seen this week,” he said.
“The longer (Jan.-Feb.) period… we think it’ll be kind of normal to a little milder than normal.
“We know that it’s going to be shorter than last winter, which is always a good thing.”
Phillips said Winnipeg has had it lucky in November, with cities like Edmonton and Saskatoon each having eight days colder than Winnipeg’s coldest this month.