The first week of December looked and felt like winter, with some cold weather and a fair bit of snow for early in the month.
The average temperature for December is -4.5 degrees Celsius, and the first week came pretty close with an average temperature of -3.6 C. The daytime highs hovered above and below zero, and a couple of the nights reached down to -10 C.
After last year, which was the warmest winter in the 58 years since weather records were started on the farm in Ormstown, the last week felt like winter should be. As further evidence, the Chateauguay River froze over shore-to-shore in a few places on December 7, something that hardly happened at all last winter.
There was no rain but there were several snowfalls which amounted to 19 centimetres of the white stuff, melting down to 16 millimetres of water. The snow is likely to disappear in the coming week, as temperatures will rise well above zero for a few days and rain is in the forecast before the weather returns to winter form from mid-month onwards.