‘Dead of winter’ isn’t just an expression.
In weather circles, the term is used to describe the apex of cold and snow. It’s essentially the halfway point of misery.
“For people who don’t like winter, it’s a time that one should celebrate. It means there is more winter behind you than ahead of you,” said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips.
Well, good news for the West Coast, because it’s time to pop bottles and go streaking. The dead of winter has officially passed in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Ottawa is the next major city to reach the point at which you can officially start going to the gym again in anticipation of bathing suit season.
None of this is to say that you’re completely in the clear, of course. There’s still plenty of winter left, and the ‘dead’ of it is based on a 30-year average of temperature throughout the year. If there’s one thing Canadians know about winter, it’s that it’s not average.
“If you take those normal daily values, the high and low, and you plot them on a graph for 365 days. You get two points that are the bottom of the curve and the top of the curve, and the bottom of the curve represents a point where the daily normals are their lowest point and then begin their slow rise upwards. That bottom point is what we call the dead of winter,” explains Phillips.
For all the promise of this news, last fall’s Farmer’s Almanac prediction – that this winter is 100% going to be hell and spring may never come – still looms in our memory.
Here’s when you can expect to be past the dead of winter in your city:
Victoria — Jan. 3
Vancouver — Jan.4
Kelowna — Jan. 6
Calgary — Jan. 12
Regina — Jan. 13
Edmonton — Jan. 14
Ottawa — Jan. 19
Montreal — Jan. 21
Toronto — Jan. 23
Halifax — Feb. 2
St. John’s, NL — Feb. 8
Iqaluit — Feb. 11
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