Canadian Weather Centre - Blog Outreach @ Wordpress - By Amateur Meteorologist Nicholas Tam

Yukon ; Northwest Territories ; Nunavut - First of all, I apologize for not been writing my weather blog since April 23. I had been spending this time in trying to edit my website. Those of you who are interested, can click on the “Canadian Weather Centre - Blog Outreach” link above.

During this time I had been away from editing my blog, a major weather pattern change happened in the North. Noticeably, the North had significantly warmed up as we enter May, and some parts of the Arctic begins to receive almost 24-hour sunlight.

For areas south of the Arctic Circle, daily temperature highs have been reaching to the positive single digits. For traditionally colder areas (because of the colder Labrador Current flowing past), such as Baffin Island, the local temperature have been reaching as high as 5 C. Wet snow had been falling in the area, and it is forecasted that the local temperature may even reach as high as 11 C by the end of this week.

Towards the west shore of Hudson Bay, cold arctic air had been persistent in the area, and hence the coldest spot of the nation had been in these areas for the past 2 weeks. The locale also reached 0 C in some cases (i.e. Arviat, NU). Note that places such as Boothia Peninsula, Bathurst Inlet, are still way below the freezing mark with temperature around the negative double digits.

As we progress west to Yellowknife and Hay River area, the temperature had been holding steady at around 5 C for the past 2 weeks, when the warm air from Arizona and Texas attacked Alberta and Saskatchewan. The warm air was, at one point, so strong that it pushes the jet stream as north as Yellowknife. However, currently, the jet stream is nowhere near the 60th Parallel. The north has warm temperature solely because of the longer daylight hours.

The Yukon - Alaska Border, the westernmost frontier of Canada, is even warmer. Whitehorse had been reporting temperature in the positive double digits. And like Yellowknife, the reason for this warm up was that the longer daylight hours, invasion of warm air, etc.

Looks like the North is set for summer, but Southern Canada, hmm, not really. Southern Canada’s temperature had been lingering in the double digits. Unlike April, Southern Canada’s temperature had been holding steady around 13 to 19 C. Whereas in April, Southern Canada’s temperature had soared as high as 30 C. One notable example would be Val Marie, Saskatchewan, which hit 29 C. This temperature still remains as the warmest value in Canada for 2008.

MY WEATHER WEBSITE: (Still under construction, any feedbacks?)

Bookmark my site at www.canadaweather.piczo.com.