What does a ‘normal’ spring look like across Canada?
Spring is a season of rapid transitions across Canada
Coats in the morning, short sleeves in the afternoon. Sunshine one minute fades to a heavy rain shower the next. Spring is a rocky transition from the chills of winter to the warm comfort of summer.
‘Normal’ spring weather across Canada is a hodgepodge of everything all smashed into thirteen tumultuous weeks. But for all the chaos in our skies above, there is a pattern to the madness.
Here’s what a typical spring season looks like across your corner of Canada.
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Western Canada sees rapid springtime changes
Folks across Western Canada are accustomed to wild temperature swings from one day to the next, especially during the spring months.
Overall, temperatures rise sharply throughout the season. Vancouver typically sees a 7°C climb in average temperatures between March and May, while Winnipeg sees an astounding swing from -1.1°C in March all the way up to 18.0°C by May.
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Sharp temperature gradients between the Far North and the tropical latitudes down south create a very active jet stream over North America. This increased activity high in the atmosphere allows troughs and storms to sweep over Western Canada on a regular basis.
Rising temperatures and increased storm activity can actually bring portions of the western Prairies their biggest snows of the season. March is Calgary’s snowiest month of the year.
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Eastern Canada experiences a steady warmup
A long, snowy winter in Eastern Canada starts to melt away in a hurry as the spring months arrive.
While we continue to experience intrusions of cold air and occasional bouts of snow and ice through the early weeks of spring, there’s an undeniable upward trend in temperatures throughout the region.
Toronto’s average temperature rises from 4.9°C in March to a blissful 19.2°C come May. Similar trends unfold farther east across Ottawa and Montreal.
Even though the Atlantic Ocean moderates temperatures a bit in places like Halifax and St. John’s, we still see a gradual rise toward comfortable conditions by the latter half of the season.
Spring is a wet season across the eastern half of the country. A drumbeat of dynamic lows trekking east across the country brings consistent precipitation to communities from the Great Lakes to the eastern seaboard.
It’s not always rain, either. Snow and ice remain possible into April. Toronto once picked up 10 cm of snow back in April 1994, and even recorded 2.8 cm of snow on May 11, 2020. Montreal has seen it even worse—the city saw a whopping 21.8 cm of snow on May 10, 1963.