Warm day in Montreal - still snow in places

Highway 17 in northern Ontario at a standstill on Tuesday as winter just won't go away.

High pressure will give southern Quebec one more sunny and warm day today before a cold front crosses the region this evening. The temperature this morning is between 5 and 8C in most locations, the warmest of the week so far. Warm southerly winds ahead of a cold front will help push daytime highs close to 21C (70F) across eastern Ontario and extreme southern Quebec. Showers will develop by this evening here in Montreal with a general rain overnight. Look for up to 15mm of rainfall for most areas, there may even be some wet snow across the Ottawa Valley behind the front by morning. Winds will increase as well as the cold front nears Montreal, coming out of the southwest up to 50km/h and gusting to 70km/h overnight. After 21C today temperatures will fall rapidly overnight to near 2 or 3C by morning and rise slowly on Thursday to 10C. Across the Pontiac region, heavy rain warnings are in effect for 25mm of rain, while even further north in Chibougamou snowfall warnings are flying for up to 25cm of snow.

Record Cold Temperatures
As noted above this system has a cold side to it that continues to produce snow north and west of the system. After dumping more snow across Minnesota and the Dakotas, the storm took aim on northern Ontario on Tuesday. Several centimetres of snow and ice forced the closure of several highways including the Trans-Canada east of Thunder Bay along the Lake Superior shore. Record cold has plunged as far south as Texas with Dallas at a record low 4C (40F) this morning. At first pitch it was only -5C (23F) at Coors Field in Denver yesterday. The doubleheader between the Braves and Rockies was the coldest game ever played there.

On Monday the morning lows were -13.1C in Regina, Sask and -11.1C in Saskatoon making it the coldest April 22 in 104 years. That is just how cold this spring has been. Montreal reached 14C yesterday which is normal for the date, but the month as a whole has featured more than half the days below normal. If we hit 20C today it will be only the second time this year
we have made it above 16C (60F).