Spring officially arrives at 12:15pm Tuesday but the march to real spring-like temperatures will be slow.
Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson says a stubborn weather pattern is keeping the mercury lower than what it should be.
"It's the way the pattern in the atmosphere is locked in over the last little while, we've seen this pattern for a good part of the month of March already, the flow coming in more from the northwest than the warmer wind direction down in the southwest," says Coulson. "Feeding that pattern has been this area of high pressure over northern Ontario where they've been getting significantly colder temperatures than normal up there, but also a lot of sunshine."
Coulson says it appears the cool trend will continue into April.
"The way things are shaping up I think there could be a day here and a day there between now and the first week of April that we do get up into the double digits. But overall the trend that we're seeing right now is daytime highs getting up around 3 C - 4 C, the overnight lows still dropping down to minus four and minus six, and that trend likely is going to be with us for the next couple of weeks."
On the bright side, Coulson says the big area of high pressure over the northwest will bring a lot of sunshine.
