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By Jim Poling
Published Oct. 18, 2018
Time to look ahead to winter and what we might expect from it this year. There's bad news and more bad news.
Sorry about that but this is Canada, the country that has the world's lowest average daily temperature – minus 5.6 Celsius.
Also, we have the world's second coldest national capital. Ottawa ranks second in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
So news of a cold snowy winter ahead should not shock.
The Weather Network has given us a sneak preview of its 2018-19 winter forecast. Ontario, it says, will have a winter much like last year with milder weather.
That sounds like more miserable patches of not-so-great skiing, not so great sledding, so much driving on our roads and left us yearning for a good old-fashioned Ontario winter.
A good old-fashioned winter is exactly what North America's two best-known, old-fashioned weather forecasters are predicting for us.
"Very, very cold," says The Farmers' Almanac. And, above normal snowfall.
Colder than normal and snowier than normal for all of Canada, says The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Just Farmers Almanacs. One is The Old Farmer's Almanac of New Hampshire established in 1792. The other is The Farmers' Almanac (minus the Old) established in 1818 in New Jersey. (Note the different placements of the apostrophe)
Both claims predicted accuracy in the 80 per cent range. However, professional weather people usually raise an eyebrow when hearing weather prognostications from the almanacs.
The almanacs have been formulated for predicting the weather. They apparently are based on magnetic storms on the sun and other such astrological events.
The Old Farmer's Almanac keeps its secret formula in a box at its offices. The secret formula of The Farmers' Almanac Caleb Weatherbee, which we assume is a pseudonym.
Weather forecast is changing and weather forecast is changing. The world has seen a lot of unexpected weather events over the past year or so.
The Florida Panhandle, devastated last week by Michael Hurricane, saw snowflakes last January. The State of Georgia had 15 centimeters of snow about the same time.
It snowed in the Sahara Desert last January and in February of the dead in a cold snap in the U.K., Ireland and parts of Europe. It also snowed in Rome in February and at the end of June in Newfoundland.
Last month was the coldest in a couple of years in a couple of parts of the U.S. and it was not much warmer in Canada. The average high temperature in Haliburton County last was 5.9 Celsius. The warmest it got that month was 17.5 Celsius.
That was followed by a warm May and an unusually warm and dry summer. The average high temperature for May in Haliburton was 22.1 Celsius.
Weather ups and downs likely to be a prominent feature for the future.
There is plenty of argument about global warming is causing all the changes. But extreme weather events are nothing new.
One thing to watch is Arctic ice cover, which is shrinking every year. It does not matter if you believe it is happening naturally or caused by human-produced global warming. It is happening and there is little doubt it is affecting the world.
In the last 40 years the Canadian Arctic has lost 40 percent or more of its ice cover. When ice melts it exposes dark waters.
Scientists say that 80 per cent of the sun's radiation. Dark water reflects only 20 percent.
The sun's rays expose you to dark waters that absorb the sun's rays and become warmer. More water warming means ice melting exposing more warming waters.
That's a cycle that you do not have to be a scientist to understand.
Meanwhile, Northwestern Ontario has already received its first dumpings of snow. Looking at the 14-day forecast, bear could be only days, or hours, away.
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