Halifax breaks record for lowest end-of-year snowfall

Halifax had its first nearly snowless December in 2022.

A Canadian meteorologist says the city has set a new record for the lowest amount of snowfall seen at the end of a year.

Jim Abraham, president of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, said the last time Halifax has gone through December without seeing at least two centimetres of snow on the ground before 2022, was in 2012 when the first snowfall arrived on Dec. 30.

In 2022, snowfall at Halifax airport didn’t even come close to that.

“We went right through December in Halifax with the total snow of only 1.4 centimeters,” Abraham said. “We certainly haven’t had a two centimeters snowfall, so that is a new record.”

Some Haligonians are also surprised by the weather. Maggie Batsford said she’s not used to warm winters.

“It’s strange that there’s no snow, and it’s also strange that it’s so warm,” she said. “I think we’re really going to get hit hard in January and February to make up for this, that’s my opinion.”

Robert Gibson is thinking of long-term impacts of such weather.

“I find that this is all because of global warming, climate change,” he said. “I think, even though it’s nice to have a day like this, that we are going to have major, severe ongoing repercussions.”

Another record could be reached

Abraham said the city may break a second record too.

The latest the Halifax airport has seen the first five centimetres of snow on the ground was Jan. 15 in 2018.

The meteorologist said there will be a couple days of rain next week with potential for mixed precipitation overnight on Wednesday.

“It’s possible we’ll get a little bit of snow on Thursday morning, but it really doesn’t look like it’s going to break the record,” Abraham said.

Looking ahead, he said, there’s a storm passing south of Nova Scotia but it’s still too soon to tell if it’ll hit or miss Halifax.

“That’s really the next hope to get something significant for snowfall here in Halifax.”

Some western and central parts of Canada, however, had large snow storms and low temperatures last month.

In the last week of December, the Niagara Region in Ontario declared a state of emergency due to a severe winter storm. Along the shores of Lake Erie, near Fort Erie, Ont., houses were covered in ice going into the new year.

Quebec saw a messy mix of heavy snow and high winds knock out power for more than 350,000 customers during a late December storm.

Across the border, in Buffalo, N.Y., more than 30 people are reported to have died due to a blizzard.

Temperatures in Halifax ranged from a lowest of – 6 degrees Celsius, up to 13 degrees in the last two weeks of December.

“There was a large cold trough in western parts of the country, while we stayed in kind of a warm ridge with storms coming from the southwest and passing north of us,” Abraham said. “We were in warmer air, and much of the rest of Canada, and in fact western Canada, in very cold air.”

But, Abraham said, Halifax may get heavy snow later in the winter, like it did in 2015.

“We do need snow,” he said. “A snow cover is extremely important to protect the grasses and other sensitive plants. Certainly, critters like to bury themselves and hibernate under the snowpack and stay warm. We do need that snow for our water resources.”

And while the next few weeks are forecast to be quite mild, Abraham said Nova Scotians should still prepare for winter.

“Even a skin of snow… can actually be quite slippery on the highways. I imagine some folks haven’t even changed their snow tires,” he said.

“That’s one certainly important piece of advice, that we will be getting winter and you should be ready for it.

— With files from Megan King. 

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