Your reward for Ottawa’s cool, wet summer? A warmer-than-normal autumn.
And as a bonus, the leaves should be extra nice.
Environment Canada is predicting “milder than normal” fall temperatures following the cool summer weather in the Ottawa region, according to senior climatologist, David Phillips.
“Summer went by so quickly and I think people kept waiting for it and it didn’t materialize,” Phillips said. “It was a rather lukewarm kind of a summer than what people felt they were owed, given the fact that we had a cold winter last year and a coolish spring.”
Phillips said what was surprising about July and August, when people expected the dog days of summer — “the beer drinking, muscle shirt, tank top times” as he calls it — were cooler, below-normal temperatures.
“It wasn’t that it was cold — there have been colder summers — it just wasn’t hot. It was comfortable. From a temperature point-of-view there just wasn’t the heat and humidity,” he said. Though the summer weather started off promising in May and June, when July came it was around a degree cooler than normal, and so was August.
This summer, there were only seven days that jumped above 30 C, compared with 15 days last year and 31 days the year before that. There was also 35 per cent more precipitation than normal as the months of June, July and August saw a combined 350 mm of rain, where normally there would be 260 mm, according to Phillips.
But as the leaves begin to change colour, Phillips said, the favourable conditions this summer for the trees “will provide the perfect frame to a gorgeous landscape, technicolor scene that you’ll see in the Ottawa Valley.”
