Winter is synonymous with big snows across Canada. But just when the bulk of those flakes fall depends on where you live around the country.
January is obviously a snowy month across the board. There are some surprises across the country, though, as some areas see their biggest snows as early as September and as late as the beginning of spring.
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The majority of Canadians slog through their snowiest month of year in January.
Most of southern Ontario, southern Quebec, and the Maritimes see the bulk of their snow fall through the first month of the year.
Toronto, for example, averages about 31.5 cm of snow each January at Pearson Airport. This is according to current climate normals, which were calculated using weather observations between 1991 and 2020. January’s average snow accounts for about 27 percent of all 114.5 cm of snow Toronto measures in a typical season.
It’s a similar story for major cities farther to the east, including Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, and St. John’s.
The culprit? Major low-pressure systems lumbering into Canada out of the United States. These potent storms often drag a surplus of Gulf moisture north of the border with them, fuelling some of the heaviest snowfall you can see from a storm in this part of the world.
Things are a little more varied on the Prairies and farther west into B.C., with snowfall patterns sharply divided between the south and the north.
December often winds up the snowiest month in cities like Winnipeg, Regina, and even over in Vancouver. The bulk of the snow arrives a little later for others, with Saskatoon and Edmonton shovelling the most through January.
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Southern Alberta is a different story. March is by far Calgary’s snowiest month of the year.
The beginning of spring sees the most snow across the Alberta foothills because we often see a combination of stubborn cold air mixing with puffs of tropical moisture washing north of the border.
One would think that winter in the Far North is dominated by endless snow. But it turns out that the northern Prairies and the territories see their snowiest months of the year during the autumn.
September, October, and November feature the highest average snowfall totals for the shores of Hudson Bay and communities like Whitehorse and Yellowknife.
It makes sense when you consider how bitterly cold it gets up north during the heart of the winter. Cold air holds less moisture than warm air, so it’s hard to get bigtime snows when the temperature is -30°C. Early-season storms with milder temperatures feature the greatest opportunity to pile up the snow up north.
Snowbirds heading south during the winter months may find that hulking snowstorms can arrive later in the season across the United States.
Vast swaths of the American Rockies see their highest snowfall totals during February and March for much the same tropical-infused reason as southern Alberta.
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A stripe of the Interstate 95 corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston tend to see their biggest snowstorms during the month of February. This is often the result of powerful nor’easters roaring up the eastern seaboard during the final full month of winter.
Snowstorms are harder to come by farther south toward cities like Atlanta, Dallas, and even the northern Gulf Coast. But when these storms do happen, they tend to unfold during January as the season’s coldest air digs deep into the United States.
Header image submitted by Percykins Joe in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
