News Release
Ontario Weather Review
April 2012
April is one of those transition months for weather that offer samples of each season – and this year was no exception. More typical values returned and Ontarians no longer experienced record-breaking temperatures.
March temperatures were so incredibly high that they surpassed April’s mean temperatures for a few southwestern locations. This was the case for Wiarton, London, Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Sarnia. The warm March conditions and the return to normal temperatures both contributed to the perception that April was colder than normal. For Northern Ontario locations, conditions ranged from normal to above-normal temperatures.
As for precipitation, April saw rain, snow and dust falling from the sky! Conditions were drier than normal in southwestern Ontario. Kitchener-Waterloo equalled its record for the least amount of precipitation, first set in 1997, with only 25.5 millimetres. Conditions were, however, wetter than normal in northern Ontario, where more snowfall than normal occurred. The additional snow received brought the winter’s total snowfall amounts close to, or above, the normal amount for the September-to-April period.
Severe Weather
With summer in March and winter in April, the strange weather for the spring of 2012 in Ontario continued. After an incredible stretch of 20°C -plus temperatures and sunshine through a good portion of mid-March, Old Man Winter made a return in April.
From late in the day on April 15 into the morning hours of April 17, northern Ontario was impacted by a significant winter storm. The storm moved out of the American Southwest on the morning of April 15 and tracked northeast through northern Wisconsin on the morning of April 16 before moving quickly off into central Quebec later that day. A messy mixture of snow, ice pellets and freezing rain occurred from the Fort Frances area to north of Lake Superior and eastwards towards the Quebec border. In its wake, portions of northwestern Ontario, areas well north of Lake Superior and much of northeastern Ontario had anywhere between 20 and 40 centimetres of fresh snow on the ground. Freezing rain was most noteworthy with this storm along the north shore of Lake Superior and into the Timmins area, where a number of hours of freezing rain occurred.
While winter raged in the north, southern Ontario remained on the warm side of the system, with many areas seeing daytime highs well into the 20s. However, as a sharp cold front from the system in northeastern Ontario swept through the southern portion of the province, powerful wind gusts approaching 100 kilometres an hour were reported at many locations on April 16. In some areas which had not seen much rain to that point, powerful winds resulted in very poor visibilities due to blowing dust. The winds were also responsible for knocking over an empty transport trailer on Highway 400 and also caused a number of power outages.
Yet another powerful spring storm system moved up the Eastern Seaboard of the United States beginning around April 22. Normally, these U.S. East Coast systems tend to hug the shoreline and then head into the Canadian Maritime Provinces, giving only eastern Ontario a glancing blow. However this system pushed inland through New York State on April 23 and then pushed up into the Ottawa Valley by the morning of April 24. This caused precipitation from the system to spread across much of southern Ontario and northeastern Ontario on April 23. With temperatures just a few degrees above the freezing mark during this event across southern Ontario, many areas received a messy mix of rain, snow, and ice pellets. Over higher terrain on the Niagara Escarpment in portions of Dufferin County, temperatures cooled off enough during the overnight hours of April 23 into the morning hours of April 24 for the precipitation to change over totally to snow. This resulted in accumulations of between 20 and 30 centimetres in these areas – certainly a far cry from the summer-like warmth experienced only a few weeks earlier. Gusty north winds were also a factor with this system, with some locations experiencing gusts as high as 75 kilometres per hour as the system continued to track through the Ottawa Valley on April 24 up towards James Bay.
| Unusual mean temperature readings (in °C), ranked by variation from normal: | ||||
| Location | Mean Temp | Normal | Difference | Warmest since |
| Pickle Lake | 2.4 | 0.4 | 2.0 | 2010 |
| Sioux Lookout | 4.2 | 2.2 | 2.0 | 2010 |
| Unusual rainfall readings (in mm), ranked by variation from normal: | ||||
| Location | Rainfall | Normal | Difference | Least rain since |
| Windsor | 31.2 | 80.7 | -49.5 | 2004 |
| Sudbury | 14.4 | 47.0 | -32.6 | 2000 |
| Location | Rainfall | Normal | Difference | Most rain since |
| Chapleau | 53.2 | 24.1 | 29.1 | 2011 |
| Unusual snowfall readings (in cm), ranked by variation from normal: | ||||
| Location | Snowfall | Normal | Difference | Most snow since |
| Kapuskasing | 72.5 | 28.1 | 44.4 | 2011 |
| North Bay | 44.8 | 16.2 | 28.6 | 1952 |
| Record low precipitation readings (in mm), ranked by variation from normal: | ||||
| Location | Precipitation | Normal | Difference | Previous record |
| Kitchener-Waterloo | 25.5 | 76.9 | -51.4 | 1997 (tied) |
| Unusual precipitation readings (in mm), ranked by variation from normal: | ||||
| Location | Precipitation | Normal | Difference | Driest since |
| London | 25.6 | 82.2 | -56.6 | 1946 |
| Kingston | 35.0 | 77.5 | -42.5 | 2010 |
| Windsor | 45.0 | 85.1 | -40.1 | 2004 |
| Sarnia | 38.8 | 75.4 | -36.6 | 2008 |
| Muskoka | 42.3 | 78.9 | -36.6 | 2010 |
| Trenton | 45.9 | 77.1 | -31.2 | 2010 |
| Earlton | 25.6 | 55.5 | -29.9 | 2000 |
| Toronto City | 40.9 | 69.6 | -28.7 | 2010 |
| Sudbury | 39.6 | 64.9 | -25.3 | 2000 |
| Location | Precipitation | Normal | Difference | Wettest since |
| Kapuskasing | 82.9 | 53.9 | 29.0 | 2011 |
Media: For more information, please contact:
Jack Saunders
Communications Advisor/Media Relations
Environment Canada – Ontario
416-739-4785
- Date Modified: