After a record day last Thursday, warm temperatures will remain this weekend in the greater Montreal area and elsewhere in the province. However, an episode of rain should bring the thermometer back to around normal for the season as of Monday.
“Saturday and Sunday, we are talking about highs around around 24 degrees for Montreal. It’s hot, but it’s not a record. In 2012, we were around almost 30 degrees, so there is still a good difference,” explains Environment Canada meteorologist Katarina Radovanovic.
She maintains 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”. “The minimums are clearly higher than normal. It follows and it accumulates, ”continues Mme Radovanovic.
On Friday evening, on Twitter, Mayor Valérie Plante argued that “the parks are open and accessible to the entire population” during the sunny weekend. “We invite you to be vigilant, because branches are still on the ground in certain areas following the ice storm,” she warned, however.
From Monday, most regions, especially in the south, should receive a new episode of rain. “That should get us back to normal which is around 5 to 10 degrees for pretty much everyone. We will then speak of maximums of 10 and minimums of 2 degrees. Everywhere, it will still be quite cloudy for the start of the week, ”says the meteorologist.
A peak in almost 80 years
The mercury should also return to normal seasonal levels for the next two weeks, with the possible exception of next Thursday or Friday, with temperatures that could rise to 15 degrees on the thermometer.
Earlier this week, several heat records were broken, especially Thursday, in Quebec. In Montreal, the temperature even climbed to 27°C that day. It then seemed very hard to believe that a week earlier, southern Quebec was grappling with an episode of freezing rain of a rare magnitude.
In the metropolis, the temperature had precisely risen to 27.9 ° C on Thursday, thus beating the record of 26.7 ° C recorded almost 80 years ago, i.e. on April 13, 1945. With the Humidex factor, the temperature felt even climbed up to 30 degrees.
A sign that Montrealers took the opportunity to go outside, 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 axes of the REV that day, almost double compared to 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 of a contrast between the cold air of the north, which wants to descend, and the hot air of the United States, which wants to rise.