page_title: Winnipeg
section_title: Climate
hierarchical_section_title: Winnipeg / Geography / Climate
caption_attribution_description: English: Curling on the Red River at the Forks
context_page_description: Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America.
  The city is named after the nearby Lake Winnipeg; the name comes from the Western Cree words for muddy water. The region was a trading centre for Indigenous peoples long before the arrival of Europeans. French traders built the first fort on the site in 1738. A settlement was later founded by the Selkirk settlers of the Red River Colony in 1812, the nucleus of which was incorporated as the City of Winnipeg in 1873. As of 2016, Winnipeg is the seventh-most populated municipality in Canada, with a resident population of about 778,500. Being far inland, the local climate is extremely seasonal even by Canadian standards with average January lows of around −21 °C and average July highs of 26 °C.
  Known as the "Gateway to the West", Winnipeg is a railway and transportation hub with a diversified economy.
context_section_description: Winnipeg's location in the Canadian Prairies gives it a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb), with warm, humid summers, and long, extremely cold winters. Summers have a July mean average of 19.7 °C (67.5 °F). Winters are the coldest and driest time of year, with the January mean average around −16.4 °C (2.5 °F) and total winter precipitation averaging 55 mm (2.2 in). Temperatures occasionally drop below −40.0 °C (−40 °F). The actual air temperature drops below −30 °C (−22 °F) on average 12.6 days annually and rises above 30 °C (86 °F) 13.3 days of the year. On average there are 317.8 days per year with measurable sunshine, with July seeing the most on average. With 2353 hours of sunshine per year, Winnipeg is the second sunniest city in Canada. Total annual precipitation (both rain and snow) is just over 51 centimetres (20 in). Thunderstorms are very common during summer, and sometimes severe enough to produce tornadoes. Low wind chill values are a common occurrence in the local climate. The wind chill has gone down as low as −57 °C (−70.6 °F) and on average there are twelve days of the year that can reach a wind chill below −40 °C (−40 °F).
  The highest temperature ever recorded in Winnipeg was 42.2 °C (108 °F) on 11 July 1936 while the highest daily low temperature was 28.3 °C (82.9 °F) on 12 July 1936. The apparent heat can be even more extreme due to bursts of humidity, and on 25 July 2007 a humidex reading of 47.3 °C (117.1 °F) was measured.
  The frost-free season is comparatively long for a location with such severe winters. The last spring frost is on average around 23 May, whilst the first fall frost is on 22 September.
caption: Winters are the coldest and driest time of the year in Winnipeg.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:06:08 03:25:14", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7428", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "980", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "652"}