Cold Canada Not Nearly As Cold As It Ought To Be

Forecast map for this week shows large areas
of a warmer than normal atmosphere over Canada

 Canada really is a lovely nation.  

I live in far northern Vermont, and I can literally see Canada from my house, and I sometimes gaze longingly to the north, the lights of Montreal glimmering on the clouds in the far distance. 

Canada, however, is not a wonderful place this time of year, unless you like darkness and cold. Winter is settling in, and Canada does winter very, very well. 

Except maybe not so much this year, at least so far. 

Winter so far is pretty much AWOL from Canada.  Sure, it's still cold up there but for the most part, it's not nearly as cold as it ought to be.  

At the start of the month, for instance, overnight lows in parts of Nova Scotia were 60 degrees, which is about what you would expect in July in that neck of the woods. (This was part of the squirt of record warmth that affected us here in Vermont on December 1.

The Northwest Territories in far northwestern Canada are usually brutal this time of year. According to @extremetemps on Twitter, a sort of clearinghouse for documenting world wide temperature extremes, it was 52 degrees a few days ago in Norman Wells, NWT.  That compares to a normal "high" temperature of about 4 below zero.  It also shattered the record for the warmest December day on record up there by a full 10 degrees.

The heat, by Canadian standards, is lingering almost nationwide this week. That's impressive, since Canada is such a large nation and there's bound to be some big areas in the deep freeze.

I could find only isolated spots in Canada this week in which temperatures were ever so slightly cooler than normal.  Vast areas, especially an expanse between the Canadian Rockies and Hudson Bay, are much, much warmer than normal this week. 

Some of that balmy air is extending south into the northern and central Plains of the United States, where record warmth in the 50s to low 60s is expected today. 

Since our cold air comes from Canada, it's no wonder we haven't had much in the way of winter so far here in Vermont. There's not much Canadian cold air to tap into, so we are just not getting that cold.

I'm sure eventually brutally cold air will build up in the Arctic darkness then ooze south through much of Canada and eventually into our neck of the woods. But for the short term, we're going to share in Canada's non-wintry start of winter.