Bone-chilling cold, snow and heavy rain: remembering December 2025
Posted Jan 2, 2026 05:29:23 AM.
Last Updated Jan 2, 2026 05:29:26 AM.
December was a weather month to remember, with many impacted by heavy downpours, freezing rain, snow and frigid wind chills while travelling for the holidays.
The E.D. Soulis Memorial Weather Station at the University of Waterloo is out with its monthly weather recap for the last four and half weeks and said some records were broken.
December 2025 will go down as the second coldest December in the last 20 years. The coldest December was back in 2017.
The majority of those frigid days were at the beginning of the month.
Nearing the end of the month, peak travel time for many, was when the warmer temperatures moved in but also brought some significant freezing rain and flooding.
Thanks to that heavy rainfall on December 28 of nearly 50 mm, the total precipitation for the month was pushed well past the monthly average of 72.1 mm, to 113.2 mm.
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When it comes to snow, it was the snowiest December in 17 years, with 54.5 cm of snow (average is 30.7 cm).
“With two months of very high snowfall, the total so far this snowfall season of 113.5 cm is well over twice the average of 41.8 cm,” read the report.
The warmest it got was on December 29th, up to nearly 9°C.
“There was also an interesting spike in the temperature early in the morning of the 29th where it went from 0.8°C to 8.9°C in an hour, then down to 4.8°C an hour later and well below zero a few hours after that.”
The coldest it got last month was -23.1°C.
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