Sunshine on the way after record-breaking gloom in January

It was a cloudy January.

How cloudy? Environment Canada Meteorologist, Trudy Kidd tells CityNews 570, only 17 hours of sunshine shone on Waterloo Region over the past few weeks.

“Actually, it turned out to be a record breaking year, not the kind of record I think any of us want to break … last year was a record breaking year, we had received 28 hours of sunshine, and this year, we only received 17 hours, so it has been cloudier than usual, usually we see more like 80 hours.”

The E.D. Soulis Memorial weather station, at the University of Waterloo, notes in its monthly weather summary, Waterloo Region recorded the second highest gloominess index in the history of the station.

A daunting name, the gloominess index is way of measuring the amount of sun in a day, ranging from 1-10.

The higher the number, the “gloomier the day.”

A big 8.3 was the average number recorded for your community last month, compared to the average of 7.1 between 1999-2023.

January also saw some frigid Arctic air move into the region for about a week in January. But, it was still a warmer than average month.

According to the local weather station, “The low temperatures in the last week never went below the average high temperatures for those days. With all that it is not surprising that the overall temperature was almost three degrees higher than average.”

As far as snowfall is considered, around 37 cm fell throughout January, about an average amount for the month, but not for the season as a whole.

“Overall, for the snowfall season we have had 46.5 cm, less than half the average of 95.3 cm for this point in the season.”

When it comes to what we can expect heading into February, Environment Canada is predicting a mild next few weeks, but we aren’t out of the cold and snow just yet.

“This current week into the next few days, we have a drier week, warmer than normal… the second half of February, the models are pointing to perhaps colder than normal…that being said, we have seen snow in April before … I don’t think in February we’re out of it yet.”

The local weather station recorded a maximum temperature of 7.3°C in January. It got as cold as -19.5°C (not including wind chill values).