It should be no surprise that Southwestern Ontario will have a green Christmas this year, especially after breaking two records over the past 24 hours.
Historically, the region only has a white Christmas about 40% of the time.
Dayna Vettese with the Weather Network says this year residents could actually enjoy some time outside.
"If you like to barbecue outside that's definitely a possibility Christmas eve and then we are expecting a high of around 7 C or 45 F for Christmas day and sunny. It's going to be a fairly mild Christmas for everyone and if you need to spend any time outside it will actually be fairly pleasant," say Vettese.
At Environment Canada, senior climatologist David Phillips says Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent smashed the record high for December 23 set in 1941 when the temperature rose to 14.7C (58.4F). He believes it's also possible the region broke a record early Thursday morning.
"I'm pretty confident you did break the record, or at least tie the record for this day," he says. "The warmest temperature of the day was reached early in the morning hours, so if you were sleeping you missed it."
Vettese says some real winter weather should arrive early in the new year.
"Winter will eventually come, it certainly been delayed by almost a month this year. So once we head into the new year we'll start to get that snow, we'll start to see those colder temperatures and it will feel more like winter."
