April was a warm one in the eastern Arctic

Residents of the eastern Arctic may have noticed some above-average temperatures during the month of April.

These were highlighted when Dalhousie University weather watcher Patrick Duplessis recently reviewed temperatures across the North for Nunatsiaq News.

Duplessis found that the largest temperature anomalies, or variations from the norm, came from along the coast of Baffin Bay and up into Ellesmere Island where the weather was warmer than average.

At the top of Ellesmere Island, Alert showed average monthly temperatures that were six degrees above normal for the month of April.

Above-average temperatures for the month were also recorded in Pond Inlet where they were 3.3 C higher than usual; in Clyde River, where they were 4.3 C higher than usual; and in Iqaluit, where they were 1.9 C higher than the norm.

“For the western part of Nunavut, I would call April rather close to normal. For the most part, it was within one degree C of what is expected for a normal April,” Duplessis said.

Temperatures in southern Canada stayed cooler than average in April.

But the High Arctic outpost of Alert, where weather records have been kept since 1951, set some big records for warmth at the beginning of April: six new daily warmth records were set in the first 10 days of the month.

On April 7, the temperature in Alert reached a high of -10.1 C, beating the previous record high of -10.6 C set in 1953.

Then, on April 9, the new highest maximum temperature in Alert for the date was set at -8.1 C, beating the previous record high of -11.1 C from 1953.

A new high minimum temperature was also recorded for April 9: -13.9 C, beating the previous high minimum of -18.9 C from 1953.

At the end of the month, it was Kuujjuaq’s turn to set a new temperature record with its maximum temperature of 13.9 C on April 29, which was slightly warmer than the previous record high of 13.8 C for that date set in 2015.

Weather records in Kuujjuaq go back to 1947, Duplessis said.