Environment Canada takes a closer look at Nunavik weather

Nunavik’s Hudson Strait communities got a spring chill this past week, with temperatures about 10 degrees below normal, says Environment Canada meteorologist René Heroux, who recently travelled to four Nunavik communities.

On April 14, temperatures dipped to -25 C in Salluit, a cool 15 degrees below the average April temperature there.

Nunavik started the winter with record-breaking mild temperatures, although the rest of the winter stuck to seasonal norms.

A warming climate means more variability across the North, bringing these kinds of extreme episodes of hot and cold to the region, Heroux told Nunatsiaq News.

But Nunavimmiut should watch out for an early melt on the region’s waterways, he warned. That’s because the sea ice formed late and isn’t as thick as in past winters.

While in Nunavik, Heroux checked in with their local municipal offices, whose staff assist Environment Canada with weather monitoring.

Municipal workers use an Environment Canada website tailor-made for Nunavik, which also shows forecasts for the entire region.

This site gets a lot of traffic at this time of year because so many residents are out travelling on the land for the spring hunt, Heroux said.

“The wind is always an important factor for travel, because you don’t want to get stuck in a blizzard,” he said. “The main challenge in the North is that the weather changes so quickly, it’s hard to predict.”

At the best of times, the topography of Nunavik is rough, so that can also impact on weather patterns, he said.

Environment Canada also observes weather data provided from Nunavik’s airports, although the agency can only analyze data from its station in Kuujjuaq.

Heroux, who is based in Montreal, said he welcomes the addition of new monitoring technology in the North, such as the installation of Environment Canada’s automated stations on Arctic-bound cargo ships this summer to observe marine conditions.