Quebecers will be able to continue to enjoy warm temperatures this Sunday in the greater Montreal area and elsewhere in the province. However, an episode of rain should bring the mercury back to around seasonal norms as of Monday.
On Saturday, the mercury reached 24°C at 4 p.m. in Montreal. “It’s hot, but it’s not a record. In 2012, we [were approaching] 30°C, so there is still a good difference,” explains Environment Canada meteorologist Katarina Radovanovic. We are expecting 24°C again this Sunday.
The meteorologist explains that with the days getting longer and a fairly clear sky, “there are a lot of hours of sunshine, which ultimately allows you to get good temperatures”.
Friday evening, on Twitter, Mayor Valérie Plante recalled that “the parks are open and accessible to the entire population” during the sunny weekend. “We urge you to be vigilant, as branches are still on the ground in some areas following the ice storm,” she warned, however.
As of Monday, most regions, especially in the south, should experience an episode of rain. “That should get us back to normal, which is around 5-10 degrees, for pretty much everyone.” We will then speak of maximums of 10°C and minimums of 2°C. Everywhere, it will still be quite cloudy for the start of the week, ”says the meteorologist.
The mercury should also return to seasonal normals over the next two weeks, with the possible exception of next Thursday or Friday, when the mercury could rise to 15°C.
Earlier in the past few days, several heat records were broken in Quebec. In the metropolis, the temperature rose to 27.9°C on Thursday, beating the record of 26.7°C recorded almost 80 years ago, on April 13, 1945. With the Humidex factor, the temperature felt even climbed to 30. It then seemed very hard to believe that a week earlier, southern Quebec had been grappling with an episode of freezing rain of a rare magnitude.
A sign that Montrealers took the opportunity to get out, a daily record of 6,647 passages was recorded on the Réseau express vélo (REV) Saint-Denis during the day on Thursday. More than 63,000 trips were made on the REV axes that day, almost twice as many as the day before.
Environment Canada recalled in the wake that the weather upheavals are frequent in April. They are often the result of a perpetual tension, even a contrast between the cold northern air, which wants to descend, and the warm air of the United States, which seeks to rise.
