Where did winter go? A 'startlingly mild' January upends winter season and nature's rhythms

A "startlingly mild" January has brought spring-like temperatures and hardly a trace of snow to the London region, leaving drivers relieved, children disappointed, and nature's rhythms upended by the unusual weather. 

Usually the coldest month of the year, January temperatures in the London region have been about seven to eight degrees above normal, according to Environment Canada. 

This January, daytime temperatures have climbed as high as 10 degrees above freezing when they should average about -3 C. Meanwhile, the overnight low, which typically averages around -10 C has struggled to fall below -5 C and has hovered around the freezing mark for most of the month.

"It's been startlingly mild," said Geoff Coulson, an emergency weather preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada said Monday. 

Jet stream riding further north 

While it will take meteorologists some time to decode exactly what caused such a mild January, Coulson said the most immediate observable clue has to do with the jet stream. The fast-flowing air current that acts as a boundary between cold northern air from the Arctic and the warm southern air from the Gulf of Mexico is running further north than it typically does in the winter. 

Environment Canada records show there has only been one centimetre of snow so far this month, leaving children crestfallen at the lack of snow days and the bare toboggan hills, while their parents are relieved they don't have to struggle to get to work in a snowbound commute. 

For others, who make a living clearing snow, it's been an idle January with plenty of customers who paid for snow-clearing contracts, but aren't seeing any snow to clear. 

"This year has been really weird," said Mike Saunders, who has been operating snow plows as part of his business, Great Canadian Landscape Inc. in London, Ont., for the last 15 years. "Right now, it's just sit and wait."

Mild weather upends seasonal rhythms

In the suburbs, where families build backyard ice rinks each season — the boards that normally mould the ice into a rectangular rink have sat on the dry grass for weeks, waiting for chillier temperatures that may not come.

The unusually warm January isn't just throwing off the Canadian way of life. It's also upending natural rhythms. Many mammals and insects are now beginning to shift north, taking advantage of warmer winters. 

Catherine Bouchard, a veterinary epidemiologist with the Public Health Agency of Canada, told CBC Radio Friday that in the 15 years she's been studying ticks, they've become far more common in Canada as the climate shifts. 

"I would find maybe 1000 ticks for a two-year period," she said of her research when she began 15 years ago. Now, Bouchard said it doesn't take long to amass a large sample of the potentially virus-laden insects. 

"Within two months, we are getting about a thousand ticks. So it gives you an idea," she said. 

How mild winters affect flora and fauna

It isn't just ticks, beavers — a proud symbol of Canada are becoming a problem for northern communities as the animals shift their ranges north, decimating some fish populations, toppling trees and creating flooding by building their dams. 

In southwestern Ontario, where temperatures have struggled to fall below zero for most of the month, the lack of snow can have a strange effect on plants, potentially making spring less colourful. 

"Plants need a certain amount of a chilling period," said Mirindi Dusenge, a researcher in the geography department at Western University in London, who studies the effects of climate change on plants from the boreal and tropical forests. 

"Plants that experience a relatively warmer winter compared to their typical winters, winters the plants have been adapted to for a long time, it has an effect of delaying the bud burst in the springtime."

Not only can it delay flowering, but it also effects the timing of when a plant's leaves emerge, Dusenge said. Studies have also shown mild winters can weaken some plants against colder temperatures, decreasing their ability to withstand sudden flash freezes that have become more common in the spring with climate change. 

Snow also plays an important role in protecting plants from colder temperatures, according to Dusenge, who said plants rely on snow to insulate themselves from the cold and enrich the soil itself. 

"The snowpack increases the temperature of the soil, which further stimulates microbial activity and microfungi and that's a key for nutrient cycling in the soil that the plant will use for later in the growth season."

Without snow cover, Dusenge said, plants will lose out on microbial activity, creating nutrients in the soil and the moisture created by the melting snowpack in the spring, decreasing soil quality and weakening the plant.