toronto weather

People are complaining about Toronto's cold snap that just set a 100 year weather record

If you're not a fan of Toronto's weather over the last few days, you're certainly not alone, as it seems as if the entire city is grumbling about the drop in temperature after the brief spell of spring-like climate we just had.

Residents got a taste of warmth with a few double-digit days earlier this month, which had residents getting outside and enjoying what they hoped was the long-awaited end of a bitter, grey winter full of cold weather alerts and dumps of snow.

Unfortunately, the snow returned just one day after one of these glorious early bursts of springtime, and again over this last weekend as a polar vortex moved in.

People awoke to brutal sub-zero temps that felt close to -20 C downtown Monday morning, which warmed up to only -6 C by late afternoon, which feels more like a frigid -16 C with the wind chill at the time of publication.

These are dead-of-winter temperatures, not early spring conditions, which has many bemoaning the quick switch across social media.

The sunny skies today have been particularly deceiving, making some believe that we were amid another bout of warm weather — that is, until they actually walked out their door into the deep freeze.

The remaining patches of snow, too, are no treat as we approach the beginning of April, when things usually warm up quite substantially.

The thermometer today actually broke a long-standing weather record for the coldest March 28 in T.O.

At -10.1 C (without the wind chill factored in) at 8 a.m., today almost beat out the coldest temps ever measured here on this day: -15 C in 1923.

The only other years on record that it was colder than that at this point in the season were 1873 and 1854.

Based on the long-term forecast, the spring is set to be very up-and-down with continuing unpredictable temperature swings and many periods of colder than normal weather through the end of April.

The city is definitely in for more weather dramatics in the coming days, when temps will jump more than 30 degrees to reach 16 C by Wednesday.

At current, parts of the GTA are colder than places in Nunavut, The Weather Network notes, with snow squalls and freezing rain in the cards this afternoon for portions of Southern Ontario.

Lead photo by

George Hornaday


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