Montreal's Weird December Weather Doesn't Rule Out A White Christmas, Environment Canada Says

"The question people tend to ask us is, 'Will it snow on Christmas?'" said Simon Legault, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.

But that's not really the right question this early in the season — it's too soon to tell. "What's certain is that it will rain today and tomorrow," Legault continued. Accurate long-distance predictions are difficult to achieve, he said, so we'll have to be a little more patient to find out if we'll get a perfect Christmas this year in Montreal.

Through the end of this week, we can expect "normal" and "seasonal" temperatures, Legault told MTL Blog over the phone, with temperatures around 0 C.

After today's rain, there won't be much precipitation through December 15, he said. Once that date arrives, we'll need to reassess and take new data into account.

Y'all, at this point, you may be wondering what meteorologists do all day and why we're playing this game again. Let us tell you this: meteorology sounds ridiculous sometimes because the data is so complicated that it's nearly impossible to fully predict anything further away than tomorrow.

That's legitimately wild to think about. We like to live in a world where AI can draw dazzling portraits basing itself on artistic human input and Christmas snow levels can be magically detected weeks in advance, but the world we actually live in is so complex, so full of variables and comorbidities and interactions, that all meteorologists can do — all a scientist with years of study under their belt, countless crisscrossing matrices of cause and effect stored in their brain, can do — is say "it will keep raining today and tomorrow."

So, yeah, it might snow on Christmas. Or, y'know, it might not. Stay tuned.

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.