It's snowing out there

Canadians are looking at their first coast-to-coast white Christmas in almost 40 years. Last winter was a record year for snow in many areas, though it didn't start quite as early as this year. As you can see from the photo (Caledon, Ontario - 30km NW of Toronto), that's a lot of snow in Southern Ontario before Christmas. In recent years, there has been no persistent snow on the ground in that region until after the New Year.

Interestingly, you don't get a lot of snow when it's really cold. You get a lot of snow when it's not very far below freezing. You get a lot of snow when there is a lot of water in the atmosphere. Water that has evaporated in large quantities. In Canada, snow comes from the North.

With the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay being warmer than usual, they remain open longer than usual and you get more evaporation than usual. Hence more snow. Perversely, the growing volumes of snow in Canadian winters are a sign things have gotten quite a bit warmer (from a snow perspective) than usual.

It will be interesting to see what happens for the remainder of the winter. Some places have already received as much snow as they would normally see for the whole year.

Phillips said some parts of the country are seeing snowfall amounts that have outpaced last year's record and near-record totals at this point in the season.

But he also said it's unlikely that trend will continue.

"Already in many places in eastern Canada, we're ahead of the record from last year," he said.

"But, you know, we have a long, long way to go. I'm thinking that, hey, there's not enough left in nature to give us another one of those years."

Nature may surprise.