Wednesday’s burst of unusually warm weather across much of the NWT was a rarity, but few noteworthy records appear to have been broken.
Getting above freezing in December doesn’t happen often in the territory, but the warmest extent of Wednesday’s miniature heatwave didn’t come close to the December record in most areas.
In Łútsël K’é, however – where weather data only stretches back to 1999 – Wednesday was the warmest December day on record, reaching 3.4C.
The old record for Łútsël K’é was 2C on Christmas Eve 1999, which is the date that holds many December records (certainly those in living memory) across southern stretches of the territory.
December 24, 1999 was ridiculously warm.
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Here are the maximum temperatures reached in various NWT communities on December 24, 1999:
- Yellowknife: 2.2C
- Hay River: 11.9C
- Fort Smith: 9.4C
- Fort Providence: 11.8C
- Fort Resolution: 9.0C
- Fort Simpson: 12.5C (December 23 that year was actually warmer in Fort Simpson, reaching 14.5C)
By comparison, here are the provisional maximum temperatures recorded on Wednesday this week in those communities:
- Yellowknife: 2.0C
- Hay River: 6.5C
- Fort Smith: 6.7C
- Fort Providence: 6.1C
- Fort Resolution: 5.2C
- Fort Simpson: 4.2C
It’s possible that Wednesday broke a few less-exciting daily records – in other words, the warmest December 13 certain NWT communities had ever recorded – but even then, Wednesday was not the warmest December 13 in Yellowknife’s history.
That honour belongs to December 13, 1944, which reached 2.8C according to the data for that day.
(You can be forgiven for not remembering that one.)
Wednesday was still only the second December day in Yellowknife to peak above freezing so far this century. The other was December 3, 2020, which reached 1.4C.
