THUNDER BAY — The odds are increasing that Christmas 2023 in the Thunder Bay area will be brown, rather than white.
There's no significant snow in the Environment Canada forecast through at least Dec. 18, and The Weather Network's longer-range forecast for the city shows daytime highs near the freezing point through Dec. 27.
According to Environment Canada data, the city had a white Christmas – defined as at least two centimetres of snow on the ground – every year between 1955 and 1987.
But between 1988 and 2021 there were two brown Christmases.
Local climatologist Graham Saunders noted Wednesday that "It used to be that the chances of a white Christmas in Thunder Bay were rated at 100 per cent. So it's a little less now."
While pointing out that it doesn't take much to get a couple of centimetres of snow, he added that "temperatures are forecast to be way above normal" this month.
This week is a good example, as Thunder Bay is expected to reach a high of 8.0 C on Thursday, or 14 degrees above the long-term average for Dec. 14.
"We'll have relatively warm temperatures during the Christmas lead-up, and also Christmas Day, so it's touch-and-go whether we'll have enough to rate a white Christmas this year," Saunders said.
The mild weather the city has already seen this month prompted him to check records going back to 1877.
"I was thinking about our warm start to December, because we didn't have a day that would have remained below zero until a couple days ago. And I thought 'How unusual is this?' So I went back in time, and found it's almost unique."
After perusing meteorological records, Saunders found this month was one of only two instances in which Thunder Bay experienced melting temperatures for at least nine straight days in December.
"We had nine days in a row this year without freezing temperatures for 24 hours a day – the first to the ninth."
He said the only other time this happened was in 2015, when there was an even longer stretch of above-zero weather in December.
"It's interesting, because it was an El Niño winter. These warm temperatures are fairly typically associated with El Niño winters."
Canadian and American weather forecasters believe El Niño will also impact winter across much of North America this winter, meaning a mild winter is four times more likely than a colder-than-normal one.
