From deep freeze to thaw: what’s ahead for Montreal’s weather in 2026?

As Montrealers ring in the new year, attention quickly turns to the forecast ahead. What can we expect from the rest of winter as 2026 begins? Will snow and cold linger well into spring, or give way to an earlier thaw? 

CityNews sat down with a climatologist from Environment and Climate Change Canada, David Phillips, to take a look at what the rest of winter and beyond could bring.

What can Montrealers expect for the rest of winter as we enter the new year?

“I always like to think about what we’ve had so far. And we’ve had in December a kind of a fascinating month. We’ve had everything almost. We had the polar vortex. We had certainly winter coming early. We saw the ski season get underway. People were pleased by that. And then we saw this kind of warm interlude just a week before Christmas. … But then we saw a return to more normal kind of conditions, cooler and no rain, no melting temperatures, but some snow.

“And so I think what we see now is it kind of looks and feels like winter, but certainly not like it was in the early part of December, where we were talking about brutal wind chills. Now, going forward, our forecast for the winter was a bit confusing because we had said that it’s uncertain what it’s going to be, a lot of unknowns because of competing forces. But things have cleared up now.

“What we think is we’ve got kind of a good start to winter with, in fact, the snow cover and the cooler temperatures. We need a little bit more cold to kind of freeze the ice, even thicker for people to skate, snowmobile, or cross-country ski. But we think that it looks like it’s going to be kind of what we’d say, a normal to a warmer than normal.

“So my sense is that going to the ski resorts will be good because it won’t be bone-chilling cold and you’re not going to risk your health because of cold temperatures. So we see sort of like a January and February. We’ll have a thaw. We always do. But it’s not going to be the kind of cruel, kind of punishing kind of conditions. Now, having said that, I mean, the weather never behaves that way for a whole month or two months. We’re going to have moments that you’ll wish you were somewhere else.

“But in fact, I think the flavour, the personality, the character of what we’re seeing going forward is going to be kind of more winter-like. I think maybe, in fact, in December, some of the worst weather you had, you’ve already had it. So you’re veterans of winter weather. And I think going forward, you’ll just enjoy what winter has to offer.”

Last time we spoke, you mentioned we might have a white spring in 2026. Is this the case?  

“Well, I mean, it’s hard to know because what happens in the spring is you get a lot of forces that melt that snow, take away that whiteness. You have rain, you have warm temperatures, you have freezing rain, you have strong winds, and all those are assaulting the snowpack. But in fact, we also know the air masses get warmer and so therefore are more moist. And so when you do turn cold, you can get some of that snow.

“So Montreal has been known for some pretty powerful deep snowstorms in March. So you can’t rule that out. And the models don’t allow us to say that. We can get to again, the kind of average conditions that we see, but particularly whether you could go skiing on March 21, that is just unknown. But my sense is you won’t be disappointed by the weather.”