Two wintry cities facing first-ever snowless Christmas this year

It’s been an exceptionally unseasonable start to the winter across most of Canada, with only periodic bursts of snow and cold interrupting an otherwise steady drumbeat of above-seasonal temperatures.

This spell of strange weather is hitting Quebec harder than just about anybody else across the east. Bare ground is in the forecast for a significant portion of Quebec on Christmas morning, including in areas that have never seen bare ground on the morning of December 25.

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We’re in the midst of an El Niño winter across North America, with warmer waters in the eastern Pacific altering the jet streams that affect weather across Canada.

Strong and persistent ridges of high pressure aloft have allowed above-seasonal temperatures to dominate the country so far this month to staggering effect.

It’s a pattern that allowed a powerful storm to sweep up the East Coast a week before Christmas. During a normal winter, a holiday nor’easter would all but lock-in the likelihood of a white Christmas for much of Eastern Canada.

But that same pattern also allowed that storm to roll into an unusually warm airmass while it dragged tropical moisture into the region. This resulted in a historic storm that brought both unprecedented rains and warmth to a large swath of Quebec, chomping away at the region’s modest snowpack built earlier in December.