What a weird winter this is

For anyone that lives in Ontario you will understand what I am talking about. Our winter of 2017 has been a very odd winter so far and we still have about another month of what could be winter. Here it is the beginning of March and the snow piles that we see are very small and they are found in the parking lots of malls due to the large piles that were built up when the plows were needed in January.

Of course, we have had the snow falls like everyone else which is normal for us here but what we have also experienced is very warm weather for us. In February we just finished recording the warmest February in Toronto ever and that is because of our crazy weather. We have had days of +16 and more which is very odd for us in February. Sure we sometimes have one day like that which we all enjoy but this was the month where we had an unusual number of days over zero Celsius. For a month with 28 days we had 21 days of above zero and that was nice. Sure we had the days of +2 Celsius and that but when you see temperatures of +14 and +19 Celsius you know that is very unusual for us and we had three days like that.

Having the temperatures like we had does mean that the maple syrup sap has been running about three weeks earlier than normal which is great for them but now what are we going to be dealing with in March. It looks like we are still in for the roller coaster of temperatures if the -6 Celsius to the +10 Celsius forecast for the first week of March so it could be a very interesting march for us.

I am not complaining about the weather we have been having because I am one of those that really doesn’t like dealing with all the snow. I am not one of those that like all the winter sports so not having the snow really doesn’t bother me too much. I do know that there could be issues with water levels if we don’t have rain and such but we have also had rain in February. What is interesting is when we have thunder storms in February because of the temperatures instead of snow storms.

I am not sure how much more snow we are going to have this year but I have been enjoying the warmer weather. I don’t like when we have the -5 Celsius temperatures and a wind chill that brings the temperature down to around -16 Celsius but we really haven’t had many of those either so it is something that we can handle. My only real complaint is the temperature swing that we have had. We have gone from +13 Celsius one day to -5 Celsius the next and that does make it hard to handle.

We still have another month of winter ahead of us and will see what it is like. I hope that we are finished with the major snowfalls for this year. I don’t mind if it rains but we need the ground to thaw out some so that the rain just doesn’t run off. I guess I am going to have to wait for the ground to thaw for a little bit but I am seeing that spring is just around the corner and that makes me happy.