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Comment by vzidex | Hacker News Reader

Here in Toronto I grew up with snow all winter long - quite literally, we'd get the first snow around the start of December and it would stick until the start of March.

Now, this winter has been 30-50 degrees F all winter, save for the occasional blast of polar air. We haven't had snow that has stuck longer than a week. The GP's message was correct. Besides, do you really think that an exaggerated claim will be what makes/breaks a climate denier's point of view?

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I'm not sure which years you grew up in Toronto, but historically there can be pretty large swings in the number of days of snow and inches of snowfall.

A minute of googling revealed this for Toronto snowfall [1]:

    year   days   total snowfall

    2010    6     18.0 in (45.7 cm)
    2018   13     36.5 in (92.8 cm)

I calculate from the limited data on that web page (years 2010-2018) that the mean snowfall in Toronto is 36.6 inches and the standard deviation is 13.8 inches.

It looks like snowfall is increasing not decreasing. However, such limited data doesn't really reveal what's happening or going to happen in the future. There were only 9 data points given on the page I found. Someone can undoubtably find official historical data for Canada that will be more useful.

[1] https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/Canada/ON/Toro...

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/info/2019/03/neige-accumulation-... is a good data vis on how snow has changed in major Canadian cities.

Ironically Toronto is the city least affected because of the great lakes, with little or no trend.

Wow, the visualizations on that article are really well-made. I live in Montreal so it's a very interesting read, thank you for sharing it! =)

I live in Upper Michigan and have noticed that our area seems to be less effected than others. If you like data here is some information regarding snowfall in the U.P.

http://funintheup.com/snowfall/upper-peninsula-snowfall-tota...

Interesting, thank you! I guess I got caught up in my stress about this winter - while last winter did have a lot of snow, this winter has had nearly 0. Looking out the window of my office I see greenery, not snow, so I figure the huge swings from year to year are something to be concerned about.

Childhood memories are not scientific fact.

I grew up in Upstate NY. There were plenty of warm winters in the '70s and '80s. I don't think anything is remarkably different.

Also, we had some summers that were freezing--like you never wanted to go swimming the whole summer except maybe one week in August. Other summers were blazing. My parents' old farmhouse didn't have A/C. They still don't have A/C now.

Cold winters are especially notable, thus people remember them more than the winters which weren't so cold.

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