Pour one out for El Niño.
According to Environment Canada, the popular warm weather pattern will bring a “milder than normal” winter to Canada this year. That’s a stark contrast from a prediction issued by the Farmer’s Almanac earlier this week, which called for above average cold and snow across most of the country. “Teeth-chattering” cold, to be precise.
Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada whose weather expertise is second only to Wiarton Willie, expects a pleasant transition from summer to fall, followed by a gradual ease into the colder months. This can be attributed to a hella hot summer heating up lakes that will continue to emit heat over the coming months.
That’s good news for anyone still shook from this year’s never-ending Ice Age. (Remember when Newfoundland got a snowstorm at the end of June?)
“It’s a little bit uncertain right now, but we certainly think it will seem shorter than last winter and maybe not as tough as it was last year,” Philips told CTV last week.
“We’re not cancelling winter. We’ll still have winter in the second coldest and snowiest country in the world, but it won’t have the sting that we’ve seen in other times.”
And despite Instagram captions posting memorials to summer ‘18, you can bask in the news that summer will stick around a little longer.
“I wouldn’t write the obituary on summer-like weather yet,” said Philips. “There’s still some summer left in the air.” Excellent.