Capital expected to melt weather record
No. Spring has not arrived early.
No. Spring has not arrived early.
It’s only mid-January, but this morning, the southern part of the territory felt a little more like April.
Haines Junction has already melted a warm weather record, and Whitehorse expected to break its record by the end of the day.
The 10 C the mercury hit this morning in the Junction is nearly two degrees warmer than the previous record for Jan. 14 of 8.3C in 1972 and again in 2009, Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist said this morning.
He added he would not be surprised to see Whitehorse break its record high on Jan. 14 of 5.2 C set in 1981 before the day is done.
The records for each community have been kept since 1945 in Haines Junction and 1942 in Whitehorse.
“It’s warmer than Kelowna,” said Lundquist, who is based in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley.
Kelowna had a temperature of -4 C at 11 a.m. today.
The unseasonably warm situation in the territory made for melting snow and slick driving conditions this morning.
As Lundquist explained, a combination of factors is causing the warm weather.
A subtropical high pressure system has made its way up the Gulf of Alaska and there’s also a low pressure system in the central Yukon blowing the warm winds to the south.
It’s expected to last only a couple of days before things revert to the more usual winter conditions.
By the coming weekend, Lundquist noted, residents of the southern Yukon can expect temperatures to be between about -14 C and -22 C.
Andrew E
Jan 14, 2013 at 7:22 pm
Neighborhood streets will be a cesspool and then freeze into impenetrable ruts over the next 48 hours.
It is beyond me that COW thinks that snow removal need only happen (in the case of my street) in late March while they expect me to shovel with 48 hours of a snowfall.