September and Summer of 2017 Weather Summary

September was a wild ride on the temperatures train and it turns out that the Summer of 2017 didn’t actually arrive until Fall. Below is a summary of how we got from there to here.

September 2017

It may be hard to believe but the map here shows the temperatures variations from normal for the first 19 days of September.

Most of Ontario was experiencing below normal temperatures; which was just a continuation of how summer had played out so far.

What’s fascinating to me is how the switch flipped almost right on the day that I grabbed this image.  Suddenly the ridge in the eastern half of North America moving to the east and allow warm moist air to move from the American deep south into eastern Canada.

The result was record-breaking temperatures for much of Ontario for the final days of September.  Some locations like Sault Ste. Marie had five consecutive days of record-breaking heat; with old records not just eclipsed but smashed by several degrees.

Below is how the final temperature anomalies ended up for September.

I know, eh?!  Hard to believe a final week of heat could overcome all that cold.  That’s a testament to how warm it really was.

The hot spot was certainly NE Ontario but not a single spot in Ontario was at or below normal, despite that first 20 days.

That was extreme historical heat.  Sadly it came to late to rescue the summer of 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

Summer of 2017

From the onset of 2017 it appeared as early as February that the upcoming summer was going to be weak for heat at the start with a strong kick in the west.  My forecast was for dry hot conditions in the western part of Canada with damp cool conditions in the east.

The biggest surprise was how late the heat actually arrived.  I figured late August by early September but Mother Nature was delayed by nearly a month.  Here are the months of June, July, August and September for variations from normal:

June 2017

July 2017

August 2017

September 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s fair to say that the Summer of 2017 was colder than normal for all of Ontario except the location on the Manitoba border and the western edge of the Far North.  Keep in mind that the warmer than normal temperatures in September occurred after Fall started – before that it was cooler.

This coincides nicely with the majority of forest fires in Ontario this summer.

Fall and Winter of 2017

So what’s coming up in the months ahead?  Let’s just say we have some interesting factors that could be big players.

• Great Lakes Water Temperatures Peaking later than normal
• La Nina conditions developing aggressively and deeper than originally thought early this year.
• 1960, 1995 are good matches.  Check out December 1995 lake effect data! Wow!

If you consider the eventual cooling that will come with La Nina, throw in warm water temperatures then you have the perfect combination for extreme lake effect snow events on the Great Lakes later this year.

Stay tuned for more updates on the seasons ahead.