toronto stories

winterlicious weather

Some observations seem appropriate as it is Groundhog Day. We all know that Vacouver gets rain, and lots of it, but this January blew records - 283.6 mm, 1.8mm higher than the old record set in 1992. As the news reports:

Although Vancouver fell short of passing the record for consecutive days of rain earlier in January, it hit new highs in both the number of rainy days and the amount of precipitation that fell. There were only 2 days out of 31 in January when rain didn't fall at some point - more than any other month in the city's history. The last month that hit the former record of 27 days of rain was January 1964. In order to count as a day of rain, at least 0.2mm must fall at the airport, where samples are collected. The rainy spell has been all but continuous since December 19. [which was shortly before I went home for a holiday of rain!]

In the meantime, Toronto has had a pretty fabulous non-winter:

Throuth the first 29 days, the average temperature was zero, half a degree warmer than the record set in 2002...and if today's high is more than zero as forecast, January will have had 26 days in which temperatures were above freezing....It has been wet...Toronto had received 64.4 mm of rain, more than twice the average of 24.9mm, and 7.8cm of snow, a quarter of the long-term average of 31.1cm...

And the city's celebrating winter with its winterfest. That means dining out at restaurants on the cheap. I'll be heading to MonteCristo tomorrow after work for a meal with a couple of friends...will have to report back! (I've so far signed up for 3 dinners with an offer to do 2 more but don't you just think that would be overindulging...slightly?

posted by toronto girl @ 10:13 PM