2006 – a relatively benign weather year, particularly in southern Ontario

But, say the experts, there’s no room for complacency. This year will likely become the newest ‘warmest year on record’ and hurricane specialists are also calling for more frequent and intense tropical Atlantic storms for the next 15 years

by HENRY HENGEVELD

The climate stats, as well as almost everyone I talk to, suggest that Ontarians had a good 2006 in terms of the weather.

Within the farming districts of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River Basin, it was a warm year. In fact, average temperatures were 1.8 C above the 1961-90 mean, second only to the all-time high set in 1998. However, the excess heat came where most of us enjoyed it the most - during the winter and spring seasons.

Although summer was also one degree warmer than normal, that was largely due to fewer cold days rather than more of the very hot, sticky ones - certainly much better than the cold, wet summer of 2004 or the scorcher of 2005. In Toronto, for example, only 20 days exceeded 30 C, and smog days were unusually scarce.

Precipitation for the region was also well above normal. Again, most of this excess occurred during the winter and fall season. Yet, because of the warm temperatures, much of the winter precipitation occurred as rain rather than snow. Hence, snow shovelling chores remained quite acceptable.

Autumn was the wettest on record - almost 42 per cent above the norm - but much of this occurred after the bulk of the crop harvest was in. In contrast, both spring and summer seasons were very close to normal, with neither drought nor flood, and hence good for seeding and crop growth.

Consequently, the corn grew tall, vegetable and fruit growers were happy, and cereal crop yields were generally well above average. For urbanites and vacationers, it was also significant that much of the summer’s rain avoided weekends and fell at night.

Within the eastern boreal forest areas, including northern Ontario, weather was a bit more extreme. Temperatures set a record high of 2.3 C above normal. The increased evaporation caused by this heat, together with average precipitation 4.3 per cent below normal, resulted in relatively dry conditions in this region, particularly in areas north of Lake Superior.

So, while the excess moisture in the southern Lakes region helped return year-end water levels in Lakes Ontario and Erie to well above their long-term norms, levels in Lake Huron remained well below normal and that for Lake Superior was near the record low set in 1925.

Extreme weather was also not a major issue in Ontario. There was, of course, the freezing rain event that swept across southern Ontario in mid-January. Although it eerily began much like the infamous storm of 1998, it soon dissipated, leaving only a few millimetres of ice deposited in its wake.

There were also three episodes of intense thunderstorm activity, one in each of July, August and September. Tornadoes and intense wind gusts caused considerable structural damage, estimated at more than $100 million for the first two events alone. In total, the provinces experienced 19 tornadoes, slightly more than the 14 that strike on average.

The return of much above normal temperatures during December also kept most people happy, although skiers and ski operators bemoaned the fact that there was simply no snow to be found over the holidays.

Like that for Ontario, temperatures across Canada were the second warmest on record (only 0.1 C below the record set in 1998), but the day-to-day weather appeared relatively benign. Citizens in the northwest smiled through an unusually warm winter. And most of the far north remained warm, warm, warm - easy on its residents but raising concerns about winter roads, regional ecology and environment.

While average Canadian precipitation was near normal, the Prairies had a drier than normal summer, but no severe drought. Canadian forest fire losses were also slightly above normal, with some two million hectares of trees going up in smoke. Severe weather events happened and weather records were broken, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The only region where Canadians had good reason to grumble about the weather was coastal British Columbia. Small wonder! The year began with the rainiest January on record and ended much the same way, with cold added into the brew.

In late December, my wife and I spent 10 days in Vancouver region, enjoying Christmas festivities with our three west-coast sons and their families. They wondered why they had left Ontario, since Ontarians were enjoying the warm winter temperatures normally reserved for coastal B.C.

Meanwhile, they were getting Ontario weather - cold temperatures, heavy snowfalls, intense rain and wind, wind, and more wind!

On Christmas day, during a hike along a four-kilometre trail through the forests of the “sunshine” coast north of Vancouver, we saw the results first hand - a true workout as we clambered over or squeezed under one fallen tree after another.

On a global scale, weather was also much less spectacular than for other years in the recent past. After record-breaking temperatures during the previous year, 2006 came in as the fifth warmest year of the past century, although only 0.2 C cooler than the warmest year (2005) and a continuation of the warmest decade ever recorded. Weather-related disasters around the world were primarily related to droughts and floods, rather than the windstorms of 2005.

Of particular note was the severe long-term drought throughout southern Ethiopia, southern Somalia, northeastern Kenya, as well as adjacent areas of eastern Uganda and Tanzania. These conditions continued to contribute to critical food shortages for an estimated 11 million people in East Africa and the Horn of Africa.

Ironically, chronic flooding devastated parts of the same region later in the year. Likewise, intense rainfall events caused flooding disasters in, among other places, the Philippines and China.

After the record hurricane season of 2005, related activities during the past year have been remarkably close to the 50-year norm and the quietest since 1997. In the Atlantic Ocean, there were only nine named tropical storms, including five hurricanes. Experts concluded that, among other things, the late blooming El Nino in the Pacific had helped suppress the formation of storms in the Atlantic by creating more shearing crosswinds that tend to rip apart hurricanes. Another factor was that sea-surface temperatures were nowhere as warm as they were in 2005.

Meanwhile, similar activity in the East Pacific was slightly above normal, with 19 named storms, eleven of them classified as hurricanes. The international insurance industry has noticed the difference. Although annual global losses due to natural disasters - most weather-related - totalled an estimated $45 billion, this was only a small fraction of last year’s record $219 billion in losses, and the $150 billion in damages in the preceding year.

Experts caution that the relatively benign climate of 2006 is no reason for complacency. British scientists have already predicted that, globally, 2007 will likely become the newest “warmest year on record.” Hurricane specialists are also calling for more frequent and intense tropical Atlantic storms for the next 15 years. Early predictions for 2007 suggest at least 14 such storms, including seven hurricanes (three of which are expected to strengthen into intense storms).

And that was the weather as it happened in 2006. BF

Henry Hengeveld is Emeritus Associate, Science Assessment and Integration Branch/ACSD/MSC, Environment Canada.