Video
Canada's Winter Outlook Favors Warmer Than Normal Nationwide as El Niño Builds
By Ryan Hall, Y'all Weather Desk · Published · Updated
Written by our automated news desk from Ryan's video.
What's new: Added city-by-city odds, fixed a quote and added the prairie details
Watch on YouTube: Canada Is About To Have A VERY Strange Winter...
Key points
- Ryan points out that El Niño is already putting "some of the strongest weekly readings on record" on the board. The last strong ones brought Canada's warmest winter on record (2023 into 2024, more than 5°C above the older long-term average) and another very warm one in 2015 into 2016.
- He says El Niño isn't the only factor. Canadian winters have warmed roughly 3.7°C on average since the late 1940s. In Ottawa, the Rideau Canal Skateway averages about 50 skating days. It was open just 10 in 2023 into 2024, and the winter before that it never opened at all.
- Ryan expects southern Ontario and Quebec to still get storms, but more of them may fall as rain, or as snow that melts within days. In the biggest El Niño, those areas got a bit more precipitation than normal and only around 70% of normal snowfall.
- He notes Vancouver is strongly favored to run warm, and says "if you're hoping for a big snow year down near the coast, this is not an encouraging setup." Higher elevations are a different story. He recalls the 2010 Olympics, when Cypress Mountain needed snow trucked in and flown in by helicopter.
- Ryan stresses the western prairies are the soft spot. If you live in Alberta or Saskatchewan, he is not writing off the cold and snow just yet, because serious cold outbreaks can still come through in an El Niño winter.
Ryan says Canada's official outlook for this winter leans warmer than normal from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with odds above 90% across much of eastern Canada. A developing El Niño in the Pacific is a big part of the reason. Ryan's warning is that a warm winter is not necessarily an easy one, because snow may not stick around while ice storms are still possible.
What Ryan covered
- Ryan points out that El Niño is already putting "some of the strongest weekly readings on record" on the board. The last strong ones brought Canada's warmest winter on record (2023 into 2024, more than 5°C above the older long-term average) and another very warm one in 2015 into 2016.
- He says El Niño isn't the only factor. Canadian winters have warmed roughly 3.7°C on average since the late 1940s. In Ottawa, the Rideau Canal Skateway averages about 50 skating days. It was open just 10 in 2023 into 2024, and the winter before that it never opened at all.
- Ryan expects southern Ontario and Quebec to still get storms, but more of them may fall as rain, or as snow that melts within days. In the biggest El Niño, those areas got a bit more precipitation than normal and only around 70% of normal snowfall.
- He notes Vancouver is strongly favored to run warm, and says "if you're hoping for a big snow year down near the coast, this is not an encouraging setup." Higher elevations are a different story. He recalls the 2010 Olympics, when Cypress Mountain needed snow trucked in and flown in by helicopter.
- Ryan stresses the western prairies are the soft spot. If you live in Alberta or Saskatchewan, he is not writing off the cold and snow just yet, because serious cold outbreaks can still come through in an El Niño winter.
What the official outlook shows
Environment Canada's latest outlook favors warmer than normal temperatures across the whole country. These numbers are odds, not temperatures. The strongest warm signal sits in the east, where Quebec City, Halifax and St. John's are all over 90%. The weakest is on the western prairies, where Edmonton sits at just 52%.
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Toronto and Ottawa are both strongly favored to run warm too. Ryan says eastern Canada has "about as strong of a warm signal as you'll ever get in a seasonal forecast."
Why a warm winter can still turn nasty
Ryan points to January 1998, in the middle of one of the strongest El Niños on record. Freezing rain fell for days across Quebec and eastern Ontario. More than 4 million people lost power, and more than 700,000 were still in the dark two weeks later. The storm cost insurers around a half a billion dollars.
He is clear that he is not predicting another storm like that, and nobody can forecast one this far out. His point is that with more storms and temperatures hovering near freezing, one or two degrees can decide between rain, snow and ice. He says he'll be watching eastern Canada closely.
His advice: be ready to get through at least 72 hours without power. That means water, food, flashlights and a radio. On the U.S. side, our winter storm outlook tracks the snow and ice risk.
Ryan's bottom line
The overall signal is clear: warmer than normal is favored almost everywhere in Canada, but that "does not mean that winter is canceled." Ryan says the big questions are how much snow sticks around, whether western Canada gets more cold outbreaks than the outlook suggests, and what happens when winter storms move through eastern Canada.
Watch Ryan's full breakdown in the video above.
| City | Odds | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Edmonton | 52% | Least confident part of the country |
| Calgary | 58% | |
| Regina | about 60% | |
| Winnipeg | in the 80s | |
| Vancouver | 80 to 89% | Strongly favored |
| Whitehorse | high 60s | |
| Yellowknife | 70s | |
| Quebec City | over 90% | |
| Halifax | over 90% | |
| St. John's | over 90% |
Explained: What an Ice Storm Warning means: how much ice, and freezing rain vs. sleet
More on November 2026 weather
Sources
- Ryan Hall Xtra video: Canada Is About To Have A VERY Strange Winter, Ryan Hall Xtra, issued