February has become a month of snowbanks, and people are skidooing like it was 1971! The biggest storm in many years was followed by winds gusting over 50 kilometres per hour and laying down drifts that have covered creeks and closed roads.
The total snow accumulation from the two storms (Thursday, February 13 through to Sunday, February 16) was over 40 centimetres and the winds that followed piled up the snow around houses and yards to make it look even deeper than that. Total snowfall for the month so far is 72 cm, which melted down to 74 millimetres of water – so, wet snow, in case you hadn’t noticed while shovelling. Along with the 5 mm of rain at the beginning of the month, total precipitation is 79 mm, which is slightly above normal for the month with still a few days to go.
The average temperature for the last week was -10.7 Celsius, bringing the average for the first three weeks of the month to -10.3 C, over two degrees below the normal for February of -8.0 C. As cold as that seems, the record low for a February was in 2015 when the average temperature was -15.8 C – how quickly we forget!
There have now been eight nights in February when the nighttime low has dipped below -20 C. The average temperature would be a lot lower if it wasn’t for the above-average temperatures for a few days at the beginning of the month (hence the rainfall) and that the forecast for the last week of the month will be very much above normal, before heading into some below-normal temperatures for the first week of March.