September was hottest on record in Winnipeg

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This article was published 04/10/2024 (347 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeggers have just basked in the warmest September in the city’s history.

Environment Canada data shows the city reached a monthly mean temperature of 17.8 C, which is 5.1 degrees warmer than the month’s normal mean temperature through 153 years of record keeping.

The previous record, set in 2009, was 17.6C.

The mean temperature for the month is calculated by taking the average temperature for each day of a month, adding them together and dividing by the number of days.

Alex Crawford, an assistant professor in the University of Manitoba’s environment and geography department, said the record is even more startling when considering only the last 30 years of data.

“From 1995 to 2024, the monthly mean temperature was 14 C,” he said Friday.

“So even there, we’re still up by 3.8 C — that’s a huge number. It’s a very large temperature rise from normal.”

Crawford said the warm temperatures were mostly caused by a jet stream that, instead of flowing over the United States as it usually does at this time of year, “was north of us.”

“It allowed the warm air to get to us from the United States instead of cooler air,”he said.

While Winnipeg was the warmest it has ever been, a couple of other places were even hotter.

Morden hit a monthly mean temperature of 18.2C, 4.8 degrees warmer than average, while Emerson reached 18.1 C, five degrees warmer than average.

Record September mean temperatures were also recorded in Flin Flon, Sprague, Swan River, The Pas and Thompson.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca