Winterfest won’t be foiled by Barrie’s lack of snow and cold temperatures.
Plans for the city’s annual winter festival Feb. 4-5, along with Hello Winter, are proceeding despite the current scarcity of white stuff.
“There may be some adjustments that need to be made closer to the event, but most Winterfest programming can proceed snow, ice, rain or shine,” said Scott LaMantia, Access Barrie’s manager of marketing and communications.
“Even during the pandemic, we provided a variety of virtual programming and/or outdoor programming (Hello Winter) that encouraged people to enjoy the city’s parks and outdoor spaces that were safe, based on the pandemic safety guidelines that were in place at the time," he added.
And there might be a little relief in sight for winter enthusiasts.
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is forecasting a 40 per cent chance of snow flurries the rest of this week, Thursday through Sunday.
But ECCC meteorologist Gerald Cheng says we might not want to hold our breath for a traditional Canadian winter.
“Right now, we are looking at basically more than a 50 per cent chance that (temperatures) will be above normal, especially for January, February and March,” he said Wednesday. “We did have colder temperatures right around Christmas, but now we are under the influence of a warmer air mass coming from the south for the last seven days, and it will continue.”
So what are average temperatures for this time of year in Barrie?
In January, the average maximum is minus-3 Celsius and the minimum is minus-12 C. February’s normal maximum temperature is minus-1.5 C, while the normal minimum is minus-11.7 C. March has a normal maximum of 3.2 C, and a normal minimum of minus-7.4 C.
“We are looking at basically above-normal (temperature) conditions, on average, for January,” Cheng said. "We can’t specify (how much above), we can only say the trends.”
Predicting temperatures is an inexact science, as is how much snow, rain, sleet, etc., will fall.
“Precipitation is much harder to say,” Cheng said. “There’s a lot of variability with precipitation, and especially for the area, south of Georgian Bay, where you get a lot of lake-effect snow.
“Usually, it’s harder to say whether it’s wetter or snowier, because we can only qualify if it's going to be above normal in terms of precipitation or below, or be normal," he added.
Environment and Climate Change Canada really isn’t in the business of tracking other sure signs of Barrie winter, such as Kempenfelt Bay freezing over, which obviously isn’t the current condition.
“The only thing that we can say is that we need a prolonged period of sub-zero temperatures and right now for Barrie we are seeing the fluctuations, so it’s really hard to achieve full ice,” Cheng said.
“We have these fluctuations where we go above freezing, so we really need to be consistently below zero,” he noted. “And you know, looking at the trends for the next two weeks and even beyond, when we see temperatures that could rise above freezing … it (a frozen lake) might take longer.”
Winterfest features outdoor activities such as ice and snow sculptures, lumberjack shows, samples of maple taffy, a polar bear dip and outdoor skating, including at the Heritage Park pond.
This year, Hello Winter is scheduled to take place Feb. 1 until March 31.
It’s all about encouraging Barrie residents to beat the winter blues by enjoying the outdoors and the many community events happening during the season.
Hello Winter kicks off with Winterfest and will include February Blues, Barrie Film Festival and nature-based pop-up programming.
For more information on Winterfest and Hello Winter, visit the city's website at barrie.ca.
