Mild to warm spring along the way, experts say

Mar 3, 2016 | News

Forecasts say the spring melt is coming soon. (Flikr/Jamie McCaffery)

Forecasts say the spring melt is coming soon. (Flikr/Jamie McCaffery)

Britnei Bilhete

It’s hard to believe with the recent winter snowstorm, but warmer temperatures are days away and spring weather is nearing.

According to predications by the Farmer’s Almanac for March, April and May will be milder than normal.

“Temperatures will be either slightly above or largely above seasonal norm,” said Sandi Duncan of the Farmer’s Almanac.

Duncan doesn’t see “the S word” coming to Ontario anytime soon, but this week’s snowstorm could have been the last of the season. “Precipitation might be more wet than white but overall we’re seeing … slightly dryer than normal conditions.”

Geoff Coulson of Environment Canada said this is because of El Nino. When those warm winds from the Pacific move through “we tend to get a milder fall and winter, and that’s certainly been the case.”

“That El Nino is expected to start weakening over the course of the next number of weeks,” said Coulson,”but will likely still exert an influence on our spring forecast.”

Though El Nino has a big impact on the weather across Canada, there will still be some wet weather. According to Environment Canada, there will be about 300 millimeters  of precipitation during the next three months, and the average temperature this spring in Southern Ontario will be close to 10 degrees.

These predictions are very different from what we saw last year.

“February 2015 was the coldest February ever in a number of locations across the province,” said Coulson. “March kept that trend … and it was only further into the month of April that we started to see some warmer temperatures.”

Though this weekend will be cold, there will be a steady climb to mild weather. By Monday afternoon The Weather Network is reporting a high of seven degrees. On that day last year, temperatures were hovering around the freezing mark.

Spring officially begins March 20, 2016 with the spring equinox that marks the balance of hours between day and night.