Two wintry cities facing first-ever snowless Christmas this year
An odd start to winter across much of Canada may leave these two cities snow-free on Christmas morning for the first time on record
It’s been an exceptionally unseasonable start to the winter across most of Canada, with only periodic bursts of snow and cold interrupting an otherwise steady drumbeat of above-seasonal temperatures.
This spell of strange weather is hitting Quebec harder than just about anybody else across the east. Bare ground is in the forecast for a significant portion of Quebec on Christmas morning, including in areas that have never seen bare ground on the morning of Dec. 25.
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We’re in the midst of an El Niño winter across North America, with warmer waters in the eastern Pacific altering the jet streams that affect weather across Canada.
Strong and persistent ridges of high pressure aloft have allowed above-seasonal temperatures to dominate the country so far this month to staggering effect.
It’s a pattern that allowed a powerful storm to sweep up the East Coast a week before Christmas. During a normal winter, a holiday nor’easter would all but lock-in the likelihood of a white Christmas for much of Eastern Canada.
But that same pattern also allowed that storm to roll into an unusually warm airmass while it dragged tropical moisture into the region. This resulted in a historic storm that brought both unprecedented rains and warmth to a large swath of Quebec, chomping away at the region’s modest snowpack built earlier in December.
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Marginal temperatures and few opportunities for snow between now and Monday will leave much of southern Quebec lacking a traditional white Christmas morning. This possibly includes both Baie-Comeau and Saguenay, neither of which have ever recorded no snow on the ground on Christmas Day.
White Christmases are usually a near-certainty in Quebec City, with snow on the ground on Dec. 25 a whopping 93 per cent of the time over the past three decades. The city’s modest snowpack may not survive until Monday, though, possibly bringing the capital its first snowless Christmas since 2015.
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Header image courtesy of Unsplash.
