Search results
historical climate data web site is a gateway to information on matters such as past (hourly, daily, monthly and almanac) weather includes: temperature, snow, snow on ground, precipitation, rain, wind speed and direction, heating and cooling degree days, visibility, relative humidity, wind chill and humidex in Canada.
- Seasonal Forecasts - Environment Canada
Guide to Air Quality forecasts. Canadian Centre for Climate...
- Seasonal Forecasts - Environment Canada
- On this page
- Introduction
- Top 10 Weather Events in 2022
- Regional weather highlights and runner-up events in 2022
•Introduction
•Top 10 Weather Events in 2022
•1. Furious Fiona strikes Eastern Canada
•2. Billion-dollar derecho rakes across Ontario and Quebec
•3. Manitoba’s drenching spring
•4. Return to hot and dry weather under the dome
Climate change is here
When it comes to the weather, exceptional has become the ordinary. Around the world, once in a lifetime storms are now happening back-to-back. In some cases, weather systems are moving slower than before, leaving more time to wreak havoc. When it rains, it often rains much harder. The weather we’ve come to expect doesn’t occur as regularly anymore. In Canada, this means shorter skating seasons, increased frost-free days, longer growing seasons and more severe, extended wildfires; these and other changes are reshaping the entire climate landscape into an image many of us are finding hard to recognize. Our climate seems to have gone amok. And it’s only getting worse. We are no longer living in a period of climate stability but in a period of rapid climate change. The world has already experienced about 1.2°C of global warming since the Industrial Revolution, and we will experience some additional global warming even if the global efforts to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target are successful. Depending on the success of these efforts, the world could successfully limit additional global warming to a few tenths of a degree or we could be heading to a world a few degrees warmer with vastly more serious consequences. So, how did we get here? Climate change is not just about spectacular heat, torrential floods, super storms, and forest infernos. It’s also about gradual yet relentless changes, such as ongoing declines in ice and snow cover, in sea-level rise. After years of creeping change, things are starting to look very different. As Canadians continue to experience additional climate warming, the wild weather in 2022 may simply be called “normal” decades from now. Not something distant or futuristic, but playing out in our backyards, in our communities and in our country. It’s real and it’s here now.
Significant weather events in 2022
In 2022, Mother Nature either froze, buried, soaked, smothered, blew or frightened us at various times throughout the year. The weather in 2022 was much less dramatic compared to the weather the year before – 2021 was the most expensive, disruptive, and destructive years for weather in Canadian history. Was 2022 tame? Try convincing residents in Atlantic Canada who faced the wrath of furious Fiona - the most intense, largest and likely the most expensive hurricane ever to enter Canada. Try telling those in southern Ontario and Québec who lost millions of large shade trees on a Saturday afternoon when a derecho – a wind storm they probably had never heard of before - devastated the region. It was the year’s deadliest and costliest weather event. Or, try explaining to Manitoban farmers and growers that the average precipitation over the past three years was “normal”. Floods were another big weather story in 2022, including both traditional snowmelt-ice jamming floods and deluges of heavy rain on frozen ground; and a new age flood of an urban kind. Manitoba underwater was one of the most extensive, long-lasting floods in history that simply wore out bailing and bagging residents, not from a single storm but a parade of powerful systems through winter and spring. Storm flooding across the Prairies also came from juicy July thunderstorms that fired off huge supercells featuring large hail (a record size hailstone for Canada, and one of the largest in the world) and blinding rainfalls. An urban flood occurred in Montréal on September 13 when a month’s worth of rain fell in two hours costing $166 million. In British Columbia, spring was more winter-like. Across the country, fall was equally non-existent but, unlike spring, fall featured more summer-like weather than the usual blustery and overcast autumn. Generally speaking, it was a quiet wildfire season, with only half the forest hectarage burned compared to a recent 10-year average. Though for residents in Central Newfoundland-Labrador, it was the worst fire season in over 60 years. Across Canada the first 10 months of 2022 averaged almost a degree warmer than normal, making it 18 consecutive such periods with warmer-than-normal conditions from 2005 to 2022.
Another record-breaking year
Across Canada, the first 10 months of 2022 averaged almost a degree warmer than normal, making it 18 consecutive years of warmer than normal temperatures. The previous longest consecutive string of above-average temperatures was between 1983 and 1991. Canada was especially warm in the summer months of 2022, the third warmest season in 75 years. Only 2012 and 1998 had warmer summers. At the end of 2021 and start of 2022, Canadians in the West and Northwest proved their mettle as winter people by enduring one of the coldest holiday periods ever. Arctic air sat stubbornly in place, with wind chills dipping as low as -55. Atlantic Canadians proved no less heroic, having to withstand three stormy weekends in January that left a trail of closures, cancellations and power outages. St. John’s and Sydney set records for the rainiest January ever. In Charlottetown, it was a true snowpocalypse– the snowiest January in history. Floods were another big story this year, including the new age flood of an urban kind. Wind storms were also significant in 2022, earning the top two places in this year’s list. A relatively quiet and slow start to the Atlantic hurricane season gave way to a dramatic and catastrophic hurricane during the last week of September, when Storm Fiona barreled through Atlantic Canada and parts of Eastern Quebec. Even more costly was a billion-dollar derecho, a storm type of which most people had never heard, that raked across Ontario and Quebec and left more than a million people without power for several days.
1. Furious Fiona strikes Eastern Canada
A remarkably slow and quiet beginning to Atlantic hurricane season changed dramatically during the final week of September with the arrival of two blockbuster historic hurricanes: billion-dollar Fiona in Canada and Ian in the United States. Fiona began as a tropical depression on September 14 over the warm waters of the central Caribbean. As a Category 1 hurricane, Fiona brought torrential rains, flash flooding and powerful winds to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic before strengthening to Category 3 and becoming the first major hurricane of the season. East of the Bahamas, Fiona reached Category 4. Twelve days later and 4 000 km away, Fiona finally dissipated in the Labrador Sea over much cooler waters, after leaving a path of destruction all the way from the Virgin Islands to Eastern Canada. On September 22, a separate mid-latitude storm stretching from Hudson Bay to Labrador brought wet weather. At the same time, Fiona grew larger, with its strong winds and heavy rains spreading well away from the storm’s centre to an expansive 800 km diameter. Over the next two days, the storms quickly merged into an extremely powerful post-tropical system with characteristics of both a strong hurricane and a strong fall cyclone. Although Fiona morphed into a post-tropical system before landfall, the storm lost little of its strength by the time it arrived in Canada. During the early morning hours of September 24, Fiona made landfall in eastern Nova Scotia with sustained winds of 165 km/h at hurricane-force 2. It arrived with a minimum pressure of 932.7 millibars near the eye, the deepest barometric pressure for a storm ever recorded over land in Canada. The reading smashed Canada’s previous all-time sea-level pressure record at 940.2 millibars from 1977 and was on par with past violent hurricanes such as Sandy and Andrew. The storm continued north across Cape Breton during the pre-dawn hours of September 24 and then over the cooler waters of the Eastern Gulf of St. Lawrence to southwest Newfoundland during the day. The storm finally reached Quebec’s Lower North Shore early on September 25 before racing across southeastern Labrador and spinning out over the Labrador Sea later that day. Fiona pounded Atlantic Canada with heavy rains, powerful winds, mighty storm surges and incredibly high waves. Rainfall of 80 to 150 mm or more occurred across the Maritimes and eastern Quebec. At its peak, the storm’s rainfall rates exceeded 30 mm per hour, triggering flash flooding with ponding and washouts. Fast-moving waters flooded everywhere, filling basements, collapsing roads, overwhelming culverts, triggering landslides, slumping soil, and eroding road beds. Significant storm surges reaching nearly two metres caused extensive coastal damage and erosion, particularly on the beaches at Prince Edward Island’s Cavendish-North Rustico, Brackley-Dalvay and Greenwich, in the Northumberland Strait and on parts of Cape Breton’s east coast, Mainland Nova Scotia and southwestern Newfoundland. Giant walls of water came ashore, causing significant coastal erosion that will take decades to heal. A buoy over Banquereau Bank (east of Cape Breton) recorded waves averaging 12 to 15 metres, with peak waves reaching an astonishing 30 metres. Fiona’s strongest winds of 179 km/h were felt along Nova Scotia’s North Shore, and the western and southwestern parts of Newfoundland and Labrador topped 177 km/hour in the Wreckhouse area. Wind gusts exceeding 100 km/h occurred in five provinces and lasted 6 to 12 consecutive hours. Fully leafed trees created added stress and soft ground from previous rains made trees easy marks for storm winds. Power poles and century-old trees toppled like dominos, while relentless winds and the powerful storm surge damaged and destroyed homes and buildings, transforming coastal geography. Fiona left streets, beaches and parks littered with downed branches and foliage. There were structural losses and considerable coastal infrastructure damage to wharves, piers and breakwaters. Strong winds ripped roofs from homes in some areas. Fiona’s fury also claimed several natural tourism landmarks such as heritage trees, rock formations, statues and popular geographic features. In Quebec, the Magdalen Islands were the hardest hit: peak wind gusts reached 132 km/h. The Island faced 37 evacuations, closed roads and declared a state of emergency. On September 25, the eastern end of Anticosti Island as well as the Lower Shore of Québec from Minganie to Blanc-Sablon were soaked with 80 mm rains, lashed by winds of 100 km/h and pounded by 10 metre waves. Homes, cottages and boats were damaged and trees uprooted; in some cases, cottages and outbuildings were blown off their foundations. Utility workers in Atlantic Canada, aided by crews from Ontario, Quebec and Maine, faced the herculean undertaking of repairing electrical transmission and distribution systems. Falling trees knocked out power to more than 600 000 homes and businesses, some having to endure outages for more than two weeks. The impacts were large and immediate and it will take months if not years to clean up and restore infrastructure over five provinces. Nearly 1000 soldiers and military engineers of the Canadian Armed Forces moved in to help start the process. Thanks to particularly accurate long-range forecasts and warning, residents were able to prepare for the storm by tying down outdoor furniture and stocking up on groceries, flashlights and batteries while work crews cleared culverts and catch basins. Fiona was a large-scale, high-impact storm and likely the most damaging hurricane in Canadian history. Tragically, there were three storm-related deaths associated with the storm. Fiona’s unusually slow forward speed contributed greatly to the destruction. To date, insurance losses come in at $846 million. Hurricane Fiona damage in Nova Scotia, including power lines down across a street. Image credit: Chris Fogarty
2. Billion-dollar derecho rakes across Ontario and Quebec
Just before the May long weekend, two days of intense heat and humidity propelled a hugely powerful line of storms across central Ontario and Quebec, bringing torrential rains, large hail and frequent lightning. However, it was the swath of downburst winds that resulted in the most damage. Meteorologists call this kind of system a derecho - a group of thunderstorms that move in a straight line much like the frontline of advancing soldiers in a battlefield. Derechos can cause as much damage as a hurricane or tornado but usually cover a larger area than a tornado. For the first time in Environment and Climate Change Canada’s weather service’s history, it issued a broadcast immediate severe thunderstorm alert through the National Public Alerting System (Alert Ready), as a means of directly reaching those close to the affected region through their mobile devices, radios and televisions. These alerts are issued only when an observed thunderstorm meets the criteria for a life-threatening storm. People were urged to take immediate shelter. Around noon on May 21, the skies turned from bright and sunny to dark and foreboding. The storm cluster moved quickly, traversing 1 000 km from Sarnia to Quebec City in nine hours with damage over 100 km wide. Strong upper-level winds blew down into the storm's centre, pushing horizontal straight-line winds forward. Embedded at the leading edge of the system was a tornado that touched down in Uxbridge with a maximum wind speed of 195 km/h. Two other tornadoes were documented south of London. One intense downburst in south Ottawa had velocities of 190 km/h. Whereas Ontario and Quebec have seen derechos before, this was one of the few in memory that raced through major cities. The derecho travelled along the Highway 401 corridor through Ottawa before crossing into Quebec. Montreal was mainly spared as the storm moved east from Ottawa and north of the St. Lawrence River towards Trois-Rivières, Quebec City and the Eastern Townships. Winds broke branches and sometimes yanked entire trees out of the ground, exposing their roots. Winds easily took out entire lines of trees, blocking roads and slowing traffic. Hundreds of thousands of majestic, mature shade trees, some 100-years-old, were lost to the storm. Winds turned loose objects into flying projectiles, overturned vehicles, tore down construction scaffolding and ripped shingles off roofs. Countless homes and porches were cracked, bent and broken by falling trees. Passengers on trains, airlines and transit services faced hours-long delays due to downed power lines and live wires across roads and tracks. In rural areas, winds flattened 100-year-old barns, took down silos, tossed around farm equipment and flattened early crops. More than a million hydro customers across Ontario and Quebec were left without power. A week later power was still out for nearly 30 000 homes. Ottawa Hydro claimed the damage and disruption to the hydro system was worse than the ice storm of January 1998 and the swarm of tornadoes in September 2018. Tragically, 11 people died in the aftermath, mostly by fallen trees. At least 13 communities declared states of emergency, including the towns of Uxbridge and Clarence-Rockland, east of Ottawa. The storm resulted in more than a million insurance claims, topping one billion dollars in damages, making it the sixth largest in terms of insured losses in Canadian history. Trees bending over in midst of downpour and winds caused by the Derecho. Image credit: Arnold Ashton
3. Manitoba’s drenching spring
At the midway point of the 2022 flood season, flow along the Red River in southern Manitoba didn’t appear to be a threat. However, by May 1, following a parade of five wet Colorado low systems, Manitoba faced some of its most extensive, longest-lasting flooding in years. The Pembina, Assiniboine, Souris, Fisher, Roseau, Rat, Winnipeg and Red Rivers were all at risk of overflowing. Over the winter, most areas of southern Manitoba saw upwards of 150 cm of snow, making it the third-highest snowfall since 1872. In spring, Winnipeg recorded a total of 331.4 mm in precipitation, making it the wettest on record (the previous record of 325.4 mm was set in 1896). It was also 3.6 times the 30-year normal, a quantity unseen since records began in 1872. Record amounts of snow and rain fell in April and May, streaming in at 30 to 60 mm at a time. Because this happened when most of the ground was still frozen and saturated with water, the soil was unable to absorb the high intensity, short duration rainfall. Strong wind gusts up to 80 km/h only worsened the flooding, causing water levels on lakes and fields to rise and overflow onto roads and erode dikes. Water levels on the Red River approached those of the 2009 flood, the highest since the 1997 flood of the century. And in 2022, the river crested with its sixth-highest volume since record keeping began. At the peak of the flooding, 45 municipalities and nine First Nation communities across the province declared local states of emergency due to churned up and washed-out roads, swollen ditches, flooded properties and damage to water treatment infrastructure. Residents everywhere were busy operating water pumps, inspecting dikes and filling sandbags. Floodwaters surrounded entire towns. The province closed provincial parks, campgrounds, and hiking trails. Soggy grounds forced the cancellation of sporting practices, games and tournaments for weeks. More than 1 000 residents of Peguis First Nation were forced to flee their homes amid severe flooding and an ice jam, the worst since 2000. Manitoba has a long history of spring flooding, but in 2022, it came from clusters of back-to-back wet days. People dealt with flood fatigue, stress and burnout amid a disaster that dragged on for eight weeks. The geographic scale of this year's flooding was unprecedented; a result of several high yielding storms, rather than from a single snowmelt or a single storm event like in 1997. While perhaps not the worst in history, the extent and duration of the flood certainly felt historic with flood-related cost estimates nearing $10 million. Flood in a Manitoba park with benches and light posts surrounded by water.
National
Record hot summer world-wide and in Canada Sea ice keeps on disappearing Canada warming 18 years and counting
Atlantic Canada
Freezing rain event in early February Mid-February storm brings flash freezes and flash floods Newfoundland’s “winter hurricane” Saint John River flooding July July heat spell across the Maritimes Atlantic soaker Tropical storm Earl soaks St. John’s Hurricane Nicole enters Canada as a post-tropical storm
Quebec
Quebec’s nasty blizzard – winter’s first Colorado low brings messy mix of precipitation to Montreal and region Slick and slippery and no lights Montréal snowfall in 2021-2022 Winds, high tides and power loss Early hot in Quebec Threat of flooding along the Gatineau River Early summer thunderstorms bring floods and outages Saguenay landslides Late August storms across Quebec Hurricane Nicole brings mixed precipitation to Quebec
Mar 1, 2022 · NATIONAL TEMPERATURE PATTERN. The volatile temperature pattern should result in most of Canada seeing temperatures that are near normal or on the cold side of normal for the season. The coldest...
Nov 29, 2021 · Here is a look at our national temperature forecast for the winter of 2021-2022. For much of the winter season, we expect that the focus of the frigid weather will be across western Canada,...
Nov 1, 2022 · Welcome to November! Are Canadians in store for a colder than normal winter? Find out what's ahead in The Weather Network's exclusive monthly outlook for November.
Guide to Air Quality forecasts. Canadian Centre for Climate Services Library. Wind Chill and Humidex Calculators. Weather and your health. Go to the desired page on the site, open the Weather shortcuts menu and click on the "Add to shortcuts" button.
National temperature. The national average temperature for the year 2022 (January to December) was 1.2°C above the baseline average (defined as the mean over the 1961–1990 reference period), based on preliminary data, which had ranked the 16th warmest observed since nationwide recording began in 1948.
