Nova Scotia enjoyed a mild December with little to no snow and mild temperatures throughout, but that doesn’t mean the rest of winter will follow suit.

Environment Canada meteorologist Jill Maepea says virtually all of their weather stations in the province reported above-average temperatures and below-average snowfall. “Temperatures continued to be up on the average in December for Nova Scotia, which marks the sixth consecutive month with above-average temperatures,” Maepea said.

“Snowfall is down even more, in Halifax for example they only saw 3 per cent of the snowfall they normally would in the month of December,”.

Snowfall was also down in the other areas of the province Environment Canada collected data including Sydney, Greenwood, and Yarmouth.

Environment Canada is primarily attributing the unseasonably warm weather to a cold air system that lingered over the prairies for most of December, “Typically we see those systems head east, however, this one just sort of lingered in the area keeping the cold in central and western Canada,” said Maepea.

Despite the unseasonably warm December Maepea is warning Nova Scotians not to think that means the rest of winter will be equally as mild. “We’ve seen it in recent years where we don’t have much snow early on then towards the end we start getting some major storms.”.

Currently, Environment Canada’s outlook for Nova Scotia in January predicts that we will continue to enjoy mild temperatures for most of the month, however, Maepea says February is still too far off to predict what it will bring.