Getting to know your local weather patterns - 4-ish years of data

I started typing this all out in a post I am writing about tomato problems, but I thought I would make a separate post to share some observations about my local weather for the past 4 years. I'm sharing this as an exercise in looking at weather data, not really as a diagnostic or making conclusions based on it. The 2024 growing season isn't complete and chose to not look at max temp which is another important indicator, because I am too sleepy and lazy.

I got my data from government of canada weather stations. I live not to far from one. Your government might publish such data, or you could try sites like Weather Underground which collects data from personal weather stations.

I downloaded CSV files and used conditional formatting and pivot tables to get the data I wanted.

2021

• Last frost: May 1st
• Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 31
• First frost: October 22
• Growing days (between 5C and first frost): 144

2022

• Last frost: April 30
• Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 25
• First frost: October 2
• Growing days (between 5C and first frost): 130

2023

• Last frost: May 18
• Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 26
• First frost: October 23
• Growing days (between 5C and first frost): 150

2024

• Last frost: April 26
• Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 11
• First frost: N/A
• Growing days (between 5C and first frost): N/A

Some charts:

If I am going to draw one conclusion, it's that I feel justified in waiting until June 1 to transplant sensitive plants (tomatoes and peppers) but need to be on the ball to direct sow cold weather crops by mid April (peas, leafy greens, beets, radishes). 2024 might have been an outlier in terms of how soon the season started, and I don't want to risk the sensitive plants because they take so much work starting indoors. It's hard to come back if they fail to thrive.