DEH CHO
Deh Cho residents who think they dug out from under more snow this winter than normal aren't imagining things.
Jacques Harvey resorted to using a small snowblower on Feb. 18 to clear the snow from the roof of his house in Fort Simpson. The village had the snowiest winter on record. - Roxanna Thompson/NNSL photo
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"It really has been near or at record levels," said David Phillips about the amount of snow in the region.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, looked at data from weather reporting stations in Fort Simpson, Fort Providence and Hay River to get a picture of what winter in the Deh Cho was like this year.
Fort Simpson had the snowiest year on record. Throughout the winter the village received 280 cm of snow, well above the normal amount of 153 cm. The snowfall broke the previous record of 256 cm in the winter of 1998-99. Before that the record was 250 cm in 1916-17.
Records for snow depths on the ground were also broken in the village in January, February and April. This is a concern because more snow than normal has to melt and the resulting water could cause flooding if there is a quick melt, Phillips said. There was 94 cm of snow on the ground in the village on April 8, 22 cm more than the previous record of 72 cm for that day.
If Hay River receives another large snowfall it could also break a record. The town has had 270 cm of snow throughout the winter. The record set in 1956-66 is 311 cm.
The winter has also been slightly colder than normal. Temperatures between November and March were around 1.5 degrees colder than normal in Fort Simpson and Hay River and a few degrees colder than normal in Fort Providence, Phillips said.
Compared to last year, however, the winter would have seemed much colder, he said. There were 45 days where the temperature dropped below -30 C in Fort Simpson this winter, close to the average of 43 days. Last winter there were only 18 days with temperatures below -30.
Hay River had 40 days below the temperature, considerably more than the nine days last year.
Looking at the snow and temperatures together, Phillips said that this winter has been a throwback to a classic kind of winter where it is cold and snowy.
Looking forward, Phillips said things look promising in the short term, but that it will be short lived.
Fort Providence was expected to reach a high of 8 C on April 10 at a time when the average temperature is normally 2 C. The hamlet had "wall-to-wall sunshine" in the seven-day forecast, which means the temperatures could feel like 11 to 12 C in the sun, Phillips said.
This is a false spring, however, and won't hold, he said. Long-term forecasts show that April will have normal to below normal temperatures.
"Spring arrives reluctantly in Canada," said Phillips.
