February expected to be much colder than January in Toronto

Toronto has been blessed with a pretty decent mid-winter this time around, as far as weather is concerned, with two record-breaking high temperatures posted in the past three weeks alone.

But we're not in the clear just yet — far from it, according to meteorologists.

"Looking ahead to the final 10 days of the month, the warm pattern over the eastern U.S. will continue to fight back, but it looks like the arctic air will have more of an influence on eastern Canada than it did earlier in the month," wrote The Weather Network's Dr. Doug Gillham in a blog post of the impending weather shift late last week.

"Most models have trended to a much colder pattern for February across central and eastern Canada," he continued.

"While we put very little stock in the models when developing a seasonal forecast, it does increase our confidence in the forecast when we see the models trending towards our ideas as we get closer to February."

Get ready, #Toronto. All forecasts predicting the biggest snow dump of the winter on Saturday. Between 20 and 25 centimeters in the GTA. #Leafs have a home date with Chicago. pic.twitter.com/BlgOTlf2QR

— Howard Berger (@Berger_BYTES) January 14, 2020

The first big temperature drop is expected to hit this Thursday, when colder air spreads into southern Ontario ahead of what's expected to be a nasty winter snowstorm.

Gillham says this weather system will usher even more arctic air into the region on Sunday "with some of the coldest weather that we've seen so far this winter."

The more traditional Canadian winter weather will then lock in for the second half of January, if forecasters are correct, and stick around for more than we'd probably like it too.

"The similarities to last winter are actually quite remarkable," notes Gillham. "Winter did not settle in across most of Canada until after mid-January, but by March the questions had changed from 'where is winter?' to 'when is this long winter going to end?'"

Fingers crossed the experts are wrong.