Downtown snowfall has been steadily decreasing by 0.26 millimetres per year since 1849. SHANNA HUNTER/THE VARSITY
September 13, 2020
By Nicole Szabo
Winters in Toronto have been growing warmer and less snowy over the years.
University of Toronto researchers Dr. Micah Hewer and Professor William Gough have confirmed your suspicions by analyzing precipitation patterns in downtown Toronto over a period of 169 years, finding that snowfall has been decreasing at a rate of 0.26 milimetres per year. Due to this decrease, winters that were once mostly snowfall have instead become dominated by rain.
For this new study published in the journal Atmosphere, Hewer and Gough retrieved historical data on rainfall, snowfall water equivalent, and total precipitation from 1849 to 2017.
Originally, 61.5 per cent of total winter precipitation fell as snow. “But now, the percentage of total precipitation that falls as snow is less than 50 per cent,” said Hewer in an interview with The Varsity. “So really, if you think about it [from] a lived experience, we are experiencing rainy winters, not snowy winters.”