weather in toronto

Toronto was hit with a record-breaking blast of winter and hopefully it was the last

Spring is just a few days away, but you wouldn't know it from looking outside. Toronto was hammered with what everyone is hoping was the last blast of winter weather on Tuesday, with snowfall battering city infrastructure and even breaking a few records in the process.

Mid-March snow is nothing new in the city, reminding Toronto that winter isn't bound by the rigid date of the spring equinox, but Tuesday proved to bring an uncharacteristically heavy snowfall for this time of year.

The city was walloped with nine centimetres of frozen misery recorded by 5 p.m. at Pearson Airport, completely shattering the March 15 record of 3 cm for that date recorded back in 1967.

In 84 years of weather tracking at Pearson Airport, this was by far the snowiest March 15 on record, more than tripling the previous record. But that wasn't the only weather record broken on Tuesday, the heavy snow also surpassing a couple of precipitation records.

A new precipitation record was set with 9.3 mm on Toronto Island as of 9 p.m. Tuesday, making it the wettest March 15 on record in the 64 years meteorologists have been tracking weather south of the city centre.

Even more precipitation was recorded at Pearson Airport, though the 10.6 mm recorded by 8 p.m. was nowhere near enough to overtake the current record holder for March 15, when a deluge of over 18 mm fell on the airport in 1953.

The heaviest precipitation was recorded in Toronto, with 10.8 mm logged by 8 p.m. Yet the abundant snow was nowhere near enough to unseat the established records for the heart of the city, where tracking goes back all the way to the 1800s. Still, it turned out to be the wettest March 15 in the last 90 years.

Toronto may be on the cusp of spring, but that doesn't mean all the wild weather rides will depart with the change of season. The city woke up to a freezing fog advisory on Wednesday, a reminder that winter ends only on its own terms.

But there's good news in the forecast, as springlike temperatures are set to arrive this week and bring the mercury as high as 17 C.

Lead photo by

A Great Capture


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