Warmer-than-normal fall expected in Saskatchewan: Climatologist

Summer is gone, and fall has officially arrived in Saskatchewan.

But Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said the start of fall may feel like an extended summer.

Wednesday is supposed to hit 30 C in Regina and 29 C in Saskatoon, about 14 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year.

READ MORE:

• Crop Report: Harvest nearly three-quarters complete across Sask.
• It’s fall! Get your garden ready for the first frost
• Most of Canada is predicted to have a warmer-than-normal fall

Phillips joined the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Monday to share more details about Saskatchewan’s fall forecast. Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below.

MORGAN: You see 30 degrees coming here on Wednesday. I was curious how rare that is in the month of September – let alone October, a few weeks away. 

I don’t think nature got the email about fall coming. It’s a day old, but you’d never know it by the temperatures. I mean, my gosh, look at September… September was warmer than June. That rarely is the case, and almost as many days above 30 are already in the bag in what’s forecasted than in August.

I know some of your listeners are saying; ‘Oh my. We’re going to pay for this. Nature is going to beat us up after this bonus weather that we’re getting in September,’ but I don’t think that’s the case. It doesn’t work that way in weather. You should have had your frost by now, but not even close. There may have been frost in maybe a couple of areas, but certainly not Regina.

MORGAN: We hit 2 C on Saturday night. I’d covered my tomatoes. It was supposed to go down to the freezing mark, but we were OK. But yeah, nothing really, yet. 

The rest of the week, all just sunny. In fact, sometimes the nighttime lows are going to be just as warm (as the daytime highs in a normal year). So I mean, it’s really odd. It’s wonderful. The harvest is probably all finished now.

MORGAN: Not quite – they’re probably thankful that the heat is coming on strong here this week, because it was a little wet last week. But I wanted to ask you, David, about the ocean pattern for the coming months here, and how it’ll affect our winter. What are you seeing there?

Last year we had the El Niño. We had one of the warmest winters on record, so it fits a pattern. But now, we know El Niño has been dead in the water for a little while. We’re in a neutral situation. Now we’re supposed to get a La Nina. This is colder water, and typically brings a colder-than-normal winter, or late fall and winter in Saskatchewan. But the truth of the fact that the La Niña has been slow to come. We’ve seen that the hurricane season was supposed to be hugely active, and it’s not at all. So that’s one kind of result of the fact that La Niña has been slow coming.

We also know that La Niñas in the past is not like La Niñas now. We know that the winters are generally warmer now, and so I don’t think it’s necessarily the hoary kind of forecast that people think.

Now we know, let’s face it, a normal day in October, is 14 degrees cooler than a normal day in August. So you know when I tell you that the forecast for the fall is looking pretty good and more of a continuation of what you’ve had, warmer than normal and drier than normal, certainly for October. Beyond that, typically you would have snow on the pumpkin and killing frost before we get to the end of October, but, my gosh, I’m sure that’s going to happen this year. But we think there’s still a lot of summer weather left, not only this week, but when we go into October. We think it looks like it’s going to be milder than normal. So, my gosh, you might not even have to turn your heat system on, so you’ll save some money!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.