Environment Canada's Senior Climatologist says southern Manitoba has now gone 15 consecutive months where the average temperature was warmer than normal.
David Phillips says the streak continued in October, noting it was not even close.
According to Phillips, the average afternoon temperature in last month was 14.6 degrees Celsius, while the normal is 10.5 degrees. Phillips says when you consider that daylight hours are less in October and the sun is lower in the sky, it is alarming to see such high average temperatures in October.
As for the average daily temperature last month, which takes into account morning, afternoon and evening, it was three degrees warmer than normal.
Phillips says if you want to find a month in southern Manitoba that ended up being cooler than normal, you have to go all the way back to July of 2023.
"You've been on a roll," he says. "I look back over the last year or so, every month in the past year has been warmer than normal, you're hoarding all the good kind of warm weather."
For those who think that we will eventually pay for all the mild weather we have been experiencing, Phillips says weather does not always work that way.
"Sometimes all the good news continues," he says. "There's nothing to suggest that it's all of a sudden going to come to a crashing end."
In fact, Phillips says it looks as though November will be warmer than normal. And this week is certainly trending in that direction. The normal high for this time of year is +3. Environment Canada is calling for many days to be in the high single digits this week.
"By the weekend when the big football game goes on in Winnipeg, we're going to see lots of sunshine and near double-digit temperatures, no wind chill," he says. "We think November will be another month where you will be putting it in the positive column."
Phillips reminds us that we will be under the influence of a La Nina this winter, which typically means cooler than normal weather. However, Phillips says he does not think it will be a "brutal kind of winter." In fact, he says the winters of today are not the same as they once were. In looking back at the last 24 winters in southern Manitoba, Phillips says only three of them were colder than normal. He notes five of them would have been considered normal, while the remaining 16 were warmer than normal.
"Clearly your winter weather has changed," he says. "The odds are that it's not going to be as winter-like as it was back in the '70s and '80s when adults today were teenagers or kids. Things have warmed up. Our winters are not what they used to be, old-timers are right about that."
In fact, Phillips says he thinks what we are experiencing in 2024 is a good example of what we are more likely to see in the future.
"Clearly what we call 'normal' is much warmer now than it used to be," he says.
Meanwhile, Phillips reminds us that the snow to rain ratio is about 10:1. That means, for every millimetre of rain, it is the equivalent of about one centimetre of snow.
"It's a lot easier to shovel rain than it is snow," jokes Phillips.
And, though many people might enjoy a milder winter, Phillips reminds us that like last winter, a milder winter can mean more fog and more freezing rain.
"If you wish and hope for a certain kind of weather, and you get it, it may turn not out to be what you really want," he says.