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They call it Winterpeg for a reason; winters in the Manitoba capital and across the Canadian Prairies are known to stretch on for months, punctuated by extreme cold spells and big snowfalls. But recent years just haven’t felt as harsh.
A warm spell in December 2024 delayed the onset of winter. January brought frigid, polar-vortex-cold days, but temperatures quickly climbed back to above-average heights. Last winter was the warmest on record in Canada, and while this can be attributed in part to a normal El Niño cycle, which brings warmer, drier conditions, it’s indicative of a creeping trend for winter on the Prairies.
Data from Climate Central, a non-partisan non-profit group of scientists and communicators who publish climate change research, show Canada lost, on average, at least a week’s worth of winter days (defined as days between December and February where temperatures fall below 0 C) each year in the last decade.
Coastal cities in British Columbia, as well as some parts of Ontario, lost upwards of two weeks of winter days in the same time.
While Winnipeg has lost the fewest winter days — just one per year — climate scientists have warned the Prairies will be a “hotspot for climate change” and are expected to warm much faster than the global average. The changes will be seen slowly, over decades rather than individual years, but winters are expected to become noticeably shorter, warmer and drier within most Canadians’ lifetimes.
Here’s what to expect as climate change grips the Prairies.
Winnipeg winters, and their accompanying shoulder seasons, are, above all, long. The first frost has historically arrived in the last weeks of September and the last frost melts away in mid-May. That means temperatures are typically frosty for about two-thirds of the year.
Over those long eight months, temperatures historically fall below -5 C — considered a “mild winter day” — for a little more than half the season (139 days), with about a week and a half’s worth of extreme cold days where temperatures drop below -30 C.
Those very cold days are projected to become more rare if carbon pollution continues as normal; the Climate Atlas of Canada predicts Winnipeg will average four extreme cold days by mid-century, and just one by 2080. The coldest temperature of the season, historically averaging around -36 C, will climb to -28 C by the 2080s.
The season as a whole is expected to shrink too, losing more than a month of mild winter days.
The warmer conditions could be a boon for agriculture — a longer growing season can bring higher yields and better survival rates for livestock. But warmer temperatures could also give crop-damaging pests a better shot at surviving the winter. Ticks and mosquitoes are expected to thrive in warmer conditions, increasing risks of Lyme disease and other insect-borne illnesses.
In urban areas, warm winters tend to bring more frequent freeze-thaw cycles, where snow and ice melt, re-freeze and melt again. Those cycles mean more potholes (something Winnipeg has historically struggled with) and more strain on critical infrastructure like sewage systems.
Another side effect of a warmer winter season: less snow on the ground.
Natural Resources Canada has already recorded fewer days of snow cover country-wide in recent decades, and projects that trend is “very likely” to continue.
Winnipeg historically sees about 65 millimetres of precipitation — mostly snow — through the winter months, per Climate Atlas data. While analysts predict more overall precipitation in the future, up to 77 milimetres by 2080, more of it is expected to come in the form of rain.
Natural Resources data show snow accumulation across Canada has decreased by between five and 10 per cent per decade since 1981, and a further 15 to 30 per cent reduction is expected by 2050. On the Prairies, the report notes, warmer temperatures will “shift the proportion of total precipitation that currently falls as snow toward rain.”
Rainier winter months can strain municipal infrastructure and pose new challenges for farmers, but there are impacts that strike closer to home, too.
“How much snow falls and how much sticks around are declining across North America,” Toronto-based sports ecologist Madeleine Orr, who studies the impacts of climate change on sport, said in an interview.
“That’s impacting your cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, any kind of tobogganing or making a snowman — the fun stuff we do. It’s going to take a toll, and it already is.”
It’s a similar situation for ice cover on the lakes and rivers that dot the Prairies. Fall freezes are arriving later and spring break up is happening earlier — especially across small lakes in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Southern Quebec, according to Natural Resources Canada.
“The data that we have uniformly shows that access to natural ice is really steeply declining since the 1990s,” Orr said. “We’ve lost, in every part of Canada, somewhere between 20 and 40 skateable winter days in your average season.”
That means there are fewer opportunities to take part in quintessential Canadian pastimes like a game of shinny, or a family skate on the river.
Ottawa’s Rideau Canal has lost about a week’s worth of skating days every decade since the 1970s, and it didn’t open to skaters at all in 2023. Winnipeg’s Nestawaya River Trail was only open for skating nine days last winter.
Researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Rink Watch initiative, which tracks conditions on outdoor rinks across Canada, projects the number of viable outdoor skating days will drop by 34 per cent in Toronto and Montreal and 19 per cent in Calgary by 2090.
Orr notes this lack of ice time has negative implications for health.
“When the weather’s gross it’s too cold to comfortably run, but if there’s no snow you’re not skiing, if there’s no ice you’re not skating — you’re kind of strapped for options, especially for families,” she said.
Not exactly.
While the overall trends point to warmer, shorter prairie winters in the future, it doesn’t mean extreme cold spells and other severe winter weather events will disappear altogether.
At the heart of natural weather cycles are the jet streams: narrow bands of strong wind that circumnavigate the upper atmosphere helping form the boundary between masses of warmer and cooler air. The polar jet stream — which typically rests around Manitoba’s northern border — has been weakening as the Arctic warms up faster than other parts of the globe. A weaker jet stream can bring surprise blasts of unseasonable weather as it distorts from its usual shape. These events tend to create “weather whiplash,” a term for rapid shifts between weather extremes, and storms that can damage infrastructure and ecosystems.
In 2019, for example, a severe Thanksgiving snowstorm rocked southern Manitoba, downing more than 30,000 trees in Winnipeg alone and knocking out power for an estimated 250,000 people. Earlier that year, a shift in the polar vortex — a pool of Arctic air usually resting high above the North Pole — plunged much of Western Canada and the United States into a record deep freeze. Another record-breaking polar vortex struck the Prairies in 2021.
While shifts in the polar vortex are natural, climate scientists believe they will be more common as a result of climate change.
Taken all together, that means the Prairies could be in for a bit of a mixed bag: warmer, shorter winters — yes. But also colder cold snaps and more severe storms.
Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.
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