What a difference two years makes.
Windsorites were donning shorts not parkas as they headed into a string of record warm March days in 2012. Today’s high is expected to be -4C when two years ago we were enjoying a dreamy 19.4.
Ashley Foster of Windsor wishes she could be back in that warmth even though two years ago she was uncomfortably near her due date. She remembers going for a walk along Ypres Boulevard March 14, 2012 in an effort to kickstart labour.
“I’m done with winter,” Foster said Wednesday. “I would very much like it to be like it was two years ago.”
The walk with her shirtless husband, Trevor Martynse, didn’t work and their daughter Miranda Martynse was born April 7. The couple hasn’t been able to go outside with their daughter much because this winter has been so cold and seemingly never ending. “Ridiculous” was how Trevor described the difference between the two mid-March days.
During Wednesday’s storm, Foster said the -40 windchill has taken its toll on her and she’s had enough.
“If I could, I would quit winter.”
Windsorites had paradise two years ago. Instead of a blizzard, they had no snow on the ground. Temperatures were 20 to more than 30 degrees higher than our below freezing temperatures now. People were walking around in shorts, flocking to the riverfront trails and getting on golf courses early.
“Two years ago was a whole different kettle of fish than what we’re dealing with in March of this year,” Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said Wednesday. “In almost every way you want to measure it, March of 2012 was almost like summer beginning instead of spring.”
Those summer-like conditions of March 2012 encouraged Terry Hayward and her friend Jacqueline Surgent Nantais to take to the downtown riverfront clad in jean shorts, strapless tops and inline skates.
The rollerblades may have been a mistake — Hayward ended up tumbling, bumping her head on a light pole and skinning her elbow.
“I still, to this day, have a dent in my face. I have a dimple now,” Hayward said Wednesday.
Asked to meet at the same location on the same day in 2014, the pair’s outfits were drastically different: mittens, ear muffs, scarves and toques.
But 22-year-old Hayward — who’s originally from Winnipeg — said she doesn’t mind the winter. “This is nothing. I actually like it. It’s the only time of year you get to do things like sledding, ice skating — All that fun stuff.”
Call it the luck of the Irish that St. Patrick’s Day fell within that incredibly warm stretch of March 2012.
Nichole Demers, owner of the Kilt and Fiddle Irish Pub on Chatham Street East, said she remembers having a couple thousand people go through a beer tent at the former bus station and a packed bar. It was named Mick’s Irish Pub then. Business was booming and people were lining up at downtown bars wearing T-shirts and shorts, she said.
“I’m not sure what to expect this year because of the weather,” Demers said of Monday’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities.
There won’t be a tent. “Our patio will still be set up this year and you will get some diehards,” she said.
The average temperature in March 2012 was 9.5C, well above the long-term average of 2.3. So far this March, the average temperature is -5.3.
Windsor had a record cold day March 4 at -17.5 and could break another Thursday with an expected low of -17.
“I’m over it like everybody else in Windsor, just praying for a weather break,” Demers said of Windsor’s winter woes.
–with files by Dalson Chen
March 2012 at Dieppe Park, left, and March 2014 at same location
