Amid reports of a late June heat wave in Europe this year, I thought I would check out the temperature in Churchill, Manitoba – where sea ice off the coast has been rather slow to melt this year with no reports yet of polar bears onshore. It turns out that Churchill has fairly often seen very hot weather (around 900F/300C) for a few days at this time of year but 2019 has certainly not been one of them. Temperatures in Churchill on 28 June this year were about 40 degress F below previous highs (more than 15 degrees C) according to online Environment Canada weather comparison reports that go back to 1943 (although their records for Churchill go back to 1929).
High for 28 June 2019: 44.4 F/7.1 C
Hottest year, late June: 90.0 F/32.2 C on 29 June 1984 [also 87.8 F/30.6 C on 26 June 1967]
Hottest year, early July: 93.0 F/33.9 C on 4 July, 1975 [also 91.0 F/32.8 C on 3 July 1976]
Bottom line: It is appropriate to scoff at anyone who claims it never got hot in the Arctic before sea ice declined markedly around the turn of the 21st century. For Churchill (self-proclaimed Polar Bear Capital of the World), there are plenty of records of brief spells of hot weather in late spring/early summer (as well as in other months) that go back to the decades when sea ice conditions were supposedly ideal for polar bears.
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