Colder weather set to arrive in Toronto this week after mild, 'gloomy' December: climatologist

A woman walks in downtown Toronto on Jan. 7, 2015. (Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press)

After an “anomalously warm” December, Ontario will begin to see more seasonable temperatures this week as winter-like weather returns to the province.

In a report released Tuesday, Environment Canada noted that there were three “warm waves” that swept through the province last month, with “remarkable few winter-like cold spells.”

“Despite mostly near average precipitation amounts for the month, both snowfall and snow cover amounts were both well below average,” the report stated.

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“By the end of the month, all station observations reported significantly lower snow depths than normal. Many locations across southern Ontario were snow free with no White Christmas.”

In southern Ontario, is was fog, not snow, that blanked the region over Christmas and Boxing Day.

Environment Canada’s Senior Climatologist Dave Phillips said it was the second-warmest December on record for Toronto.

He said on average, Toronto sees 12 “freeze” days in December, where the temperature stays above the freezing mark for the entire day.

“We only had one of those days this year in December,” he told CP24.com on Tuesday.

He said while the city never quite felt “balmy,” it was on average about five degrees warmer than previous Decembers on record.

“And I get excited by half a degree warmer than normal,” Phillips said.

Toronto only saw 10 centimetres of snowfall in December, well below the average of 25 centimetres for the month.

He added that fog and rain made it feel “more marine than continental” in Toronto last month.

“It was more like a Vancouver or a Halifax kind of a month,” he said. “It was very gloomy.”

Phillips said that Toronto saw twice the amount of rain than normal last month and significantly more days with fog.

“Usually we normally see about four days with fog or maybe five days, but we had 17 of those suckers (this year),” he added.

“Sometimes it was just like around the clock, every hour.”

Looking ahead, Phillips said while January will naturally bring colder temperatures, as it is historically the coldest month of the season, nature has no plans to make up for lost time.

“Nature’s not going to punish us,” he said with a laugh.

“There are some people who are hiding under the bed because they think that nature's going to beat us up. Now, you know, you pay for good weather if it’s warmer than normal… there is no science to that.”

He said the El Niño climate pattern that brought warmer temperatures to the province last month will likely continue into January.

“We're into this pattern of El Niño, it's not going away, it's not used up, it's not spent, it's not exhausted,” he said. “It's likely to continue in the same kind of vein, maybe not as balmy as December, but generally January, February are not as Balmy as December.”

He said winter has not been “cancelled” but merely “delayed.”

“Don't think that winter is over,” he said. “Most likely it hasn't started.”