Montreal's long, cold winter officially ended at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday — but it looks as though actual spring weather will have to wait.
There are a couple of dueling spring forecasts out for the country, one from Environment Canada, and the other from the Weather Network — and both seem to suggest if you're looking for some early signs of spring, you may have to wait at least a month.
The Environment Canada forecast suggests southwestern Quebec will be cooler than normal this spring, with above average precipitation. Or the next week or so, meanwhile, we're looking at temperatures to climb back up to seasonal values — +2 for a daytime high, and just below freezing for an overnight low — and stay there for the rest of the month.
David Phillips, the senior climatologist with Environment Canada, says spring is usually a fickle season, and will be an especially fickle one for this part of the country, with a significant warmup possibly coming only in about a month's time.
"People want some good news," Phillips says. "Patience is the key word. We're not rushing into spring. We've got to get through March and early April. But certainly the last part of April — of spring — looks very promising."
Normal values, however, are difficult to define when it comes to the transition between winter and spring in this part of the country — and even Phillips acknowledges that.
"I've been in the business a long time, and I don't know what's normal anymore," It's almost as if it's wonky. It's almost as if winters used to be cold and summers used to be hot. And now it's almost a crapshoot as to what the seasons are going to be like."
Phillips points out that there were times this past winter where the North Pole has actually been warmer than southern Canada — not a normal pattern by any measure.
He does have some good news — he doesn't expect a repeat of the kind of flooding we saw in western Montreal and western Quebec last year. And as often happens, when the sun does come this spring, it'll be higher in the sky, and it will "feel" warmer.
The Weather Network's spring model, meanwhile, is slightly more generous — temperatures are expected to hover around normal values, with above-average precipitation. That could mean in the early part of spring, there could be an increase in the potential for what they they call "winter-like events".