January 2023: a record month for snow and mildness

A Montreal street after the January 25-26, 2023 snowstorm.

If your car got buried and stuck in the snow time and time again in January and you saw more Montrealers than usual pushing stuck vehicles, you’re not alone. Montreal received a near-record level of snowfall in January, with nearly a meter of solid precipitation. Mercury has been more lenient with Montrealers since the start of the new year.

January 2023 was the month with the warmest nights recorded since 1973, according to data compiled by the Infoclimat website. The nights were on average 6.6°C warmer than seasonal norms.

Beyond the mild nights, temperatures were on average the third warmest ever recorded for the month of January in Montreal. It averaged -4.3°C. It hadn’t been so cold for 21 years, in January 2002.

This month of January was also the snowiest in 24 years for the Quebec metropolis. An impressive 94.8 cm of snow fell in 31 days. Of this figure, 47 cm fell between 25 and 30 January. In January 1999, the snow record for the first month of the year was reached with 95 cm fallen.

Winters that are getting milder and milder?

The months of January are getting milder and milder sweet in Quebec. In Montreal, of the five coldest months of January recorded since the compilation of the data, four occurred after 2000.

The months of January 2020, 2021 and 2023 are also part of the twelve months of January the mildest of Montreal's weather records.

Winter mildness, even if it is pleasant, can negatively impact Quebec's ecosystems in several ways. For example, the waters are less and less frozen and therefore more and more lively, which can accentuate the erosion of the banks.