Good news, everybody! Winter's finally over, according to Environment Canada. It was a really dismal winter, what with the extreme cold and the Omicron variant sweeping through the province, but Montreal weather in April is projected to be considerably warmer (and, we hope, less defined by COVID-19).
The weather in March was kind of all over the place, but that's to be expected at this time of year. "If we look at the temperatures we had, they're really close to normal," said Simon Legault, meteorologist with Environment Canada.
The warmest day of the month was March 17, which reached 15.6 C in Montreal and 18 C in parts of Montérégie.
It was a record-breaker for March 17, but not a particularly note-worthy record. In 2012, during the week of March 17, temperatures reached well over 20 C.
"So it was a record day for that specific date, but it wouldn't have been a record if it happened two days after that," said Legault. "It's a new record, but not an exceptional record."
Where this March really stood out was in the levels of precipitation we received. Typically, Montreal can expect about 30 millimetres of snow during the month of March. Instead, this year we had 72 millimetres of rain — more than twice the amount of precipitation than usual. No wonder the roads got icy!
As we head into April, we can expect a week of chilly but sunny days, with warmers temperatures reaching us by the end of the week.
Unfortunately, we can also expect precipitation at the end of the week – rain downtown and a mix of rain and snow in the suburbs – so don't forget an umbrella.
After that, April's weather is likely to be about average for this time of year. The typical range for daytime temperatures is 5–10 C with nighttime temperatures dipping back down below 0. Basically, winter's finally over, which is all any of us really want to hear.
