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It’s a good week to admire the December wildflowers growing in Ottawa, as we break one weather record after another.
Friday’s high of 13.2 C was 15 degrees above normal.
There’s a good chance of seeing dandelions blooming in almost any lawn in the city. But that’s not all.
Dan Brunton, an environmental consultant who specializes in wild plants, didn’t have to look beyond his own west-end garden to find bluebells blooming.
“Bizarre, but they’re still in flower,” he said. “Looking a little tired but still bright blue.”
There’s witch hazel blooming at Green’s Creek, he noted. Dandelions are “a classic” for December flowers, if there isn’t a cover of snow.
“And there’s a whole bunch of (wild) mustards.”
A dandelion sprouts in Ottawa on Dec. 11, 2015.
The force behind this last gasp in the gardens is a warm fall leading to record-breaking warmth in the past two days:
• Thursday set a record high for its date, reaching 11.1 C.
• Friday cruised easily past the previous record high of 9.4 C at breakfast time and peaked at 13.2 C around noon. Breaking a record high by nearly four degrees is very unusual.
• The overnight low between Thursday and Friday was 7 C, also the warmest on record. All these records go back to 1938.
• And snow? We have had a measly 0.6 centimetres this year, and that was in November. That too is a record, notes Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips. “The previous least amount was 1.6 cm in 1998.”
No mystery to the reason for all this, he said. “If it looks like El Niño, feels like it, then it probably is. I mean, it doesn’t come with advertising on it, but we clearly know this is the time when you begin to feel the effects of El Niño.”
The constant south winds are one clue, he said. Another is warmth across the country: Snowless in Timmins, mild in Winnipeg, ground still not frozen anywhere.
“Until winter arrives in the north it’s not going to be in the south.”
The archives show what this time of year can be like.
In 1995, Ottawa already had 50 cm of snow on the ground. On Dec. 11 of 1992, 22 cm fell in a single day.
Phillips doesn’t lay odds on a white Christmas yet. The chances are good in an average year, but this year isn’t typical. Still, he says, “we could easily have a big snowstorm on the 23rd.”
His gut feeling is that there’s a trend, or as calls it, “persistence” in the weather. It sets up a pattern, then follows it, “so if in doubt, always look out the window to see what you’ve got.”
Back to the garden, where Brunton warns that “many things (plants) get tricked into thinking it’s spring.” This would be particularly true if we had already had a cold spell, he notes.
“You get stuff trying to be springlike, which is a very bad decision.”
tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
Friday’s high of 13.2 C was 15 degrees above normal.
There’s a good chance of seeing dandelions blooming in almost any lawn in the city. But that’s not all.
Dan Brunton, an environmental consultant who specializes in wild plants, didn’t have to look beyond his own west-end garden to find bluebells blooming.
“Bizarre, but they’re still in flower,” he said. “Looking a little tired but still bright blue.”
There’s witch hazel blooming at Green’s Creek, he noted. Dandelions are “a classic” for December flowers, if there isn’t a cover of snow.
“And there’s a whole bunch of (wild) mustards.”
A dandelion sprouts in Ottawa on Dec. 11, 2015.
The force behind this last gasp in the gardens is a warm fall leading to record-breaking warmth in the past two days:
• Thursday set a record high for its date, reaching 11.1 C.
• Friday cruised easily past the previous record high of 9.4 C at breakfast time and peaked at 13.2 C around noon. Breaking a record high by nearly four degrees is very unusual.
• The overnight low between Thursday and Friday was 7 C, also the warmest on record. All these records go back to 1938.
• And snow? We have had a measly 0.6 centimetres this year, and that was in November. That too is a record, notes Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips. “The previous least amount was 1.6 cm in 1998.”
No mystery to the reason for all this, he said. “If it looks like El Niño, feels like it, then it probably is. I mean, it doesn’t come with advertising on it, but we clearly know this is the time when you begin to feel the effects of El Niño.”
The constant south winds are one clue, he said. Another is warmth across the country: Snowless in Timmins, mild in Winnipeg, ground still not frozen anywhere.
“Until winter arrives in the north it’s not going to be in the south.”
The archives show what this time of year can be like.
In 1995, Ottawa already had 50 cm of snow on the ground. On Dec. 11 of 1992, 22 cm fell in a single day.
Phillips doesn’t lay odds on a white Christmas yet. The chances are good in an average year, but this year isn’t typical. Still, he says, “we could easily have a big snowstorm on the 23rd.”
His gut feeling is that there’s a trend, or as calls it, “persistence” in the weather. It sets up a pattern, then follows it, “so if in doubt, always look out the window to see what you’ve got.”
Back to the garden, where Brunton warns that “many things (plants) get tricked into thinking it’s spring.” This would be particularly true if we had already had a cold spell, he notes.
“You get stuff trying to be springlike, which is a very bad decision.”
tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
