March Break weather records for Hamilton [CHART]

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*Never let weather facts get in the way of a good weather headline *

It’s going to be a warm week in Hamilton and Environment Canada is already reporting a broken temperature record for “Hamilton” with one big huge missing detail – by “Hamilton” they mean since they’ve measured temperature at Mount Hope airport.

It makes for great headlines, but is not fully accurate – they’ve only measured the temperature at Mount Hope (which is significantly outside the urban core) since 1960. Previous to this, temperature in Hamilton was measure near the RBG since 1866

The RBG station was 3.15km from the city centre. Mount Hope is 10.11km from the centre.

What this means is comparison’s of Hamilton’s weather data is an apple and oranges affair.

Ignore the past or accept apples and oranges

Environment Canada chooses to ignore pre-1960 Hamilton weather data when it announces new “records” for Hamilton. It’s great headline material, people love weather stories – accuracy not required.

The Mount Hope weather station is not an accurate indicator of what’s actually happening in the city.

1.2mm of rain causes severe flooding in Hamilton!

According to Environment Canada, Hamilton received 1.2mm of rain on July 7, 2010. This small amount of rain triggered serious flooding, especially in the east end of the city.

In fact, radar estimates of 50 – 75 mm were recorded in the east end during a two-hour period with some estimates as high as 120 mm during the rain event.

The isolated weather event of July 7, 2010 was too far from the airport to be properly measured.

Using both historical and more historical data

I, on my personal website, choose to include the pre-1960 Hamilton weather facts when writing about records in our city.

Why? Simply put, it gives a broader view of Hamilton’s weather history.

The March Break weather records

The forecast for the week ahead is beautiful with temperatures predicted to peak at 20°C Thursday.

It will be great March Break weather, like we haven’t seen since 1995, but should not break any of the 1990 records when summer temperatures arrived just in time for the March Break.