Climate
The traditional climate for most of the Ontario tobacco belt has witnessed temperatures as low of −7.8 °C (18.0 °F) in January and as high as 25.6 °C (78.1 °F) in July. Like everywhere else in the world, the Ontario tobacco belt has been affected by global warming over the decades.
A devastating tornado that started in nearby Woodstock would devastate several tobacco farms in the tobacco belt back during the late 1970s. However, recent tornadoes have not been as severe as the one that occurred in the summer of 1979. An overnight frost in the early fall of 1999 damaged the unharvested crops of one hundred local tobacco farms; Norfolk County, Brant County, and Oxford County were affected in the disaster.
However with the summer temperatures of 2009 having been the coldest since 1816, the number of successful tobacco and food crops were fewer and more expensive because of fears of an early frost that never quite surfaced in 2009. The same effect was felt months after the severe December 22–28 blizzard with the subsequent blizzards on February 5–6, 2010 and on February 25–27 of that same year. There were two outbreaks of blizzards that occurred in this area between January 25 and February 2, 2011. After the start of 2012, the effects of the March 2012 North American heat wave has rendered virtually all snowfall in this area non-existent for the first time since the winter of 1994-95. The heat wave has also shattered all of the temperature records throughout the Ontario tobacco belt along with the rest of Southern Canada and parts of North America. This heat wave has extended itself into the summer months. During August 2012, only parts of South America and Northern Australia experienced temperatures that were cooler than usual. The heat wave officially ended in early November 2012 when local temperatures plunged below 10 °C or 50 °F.
Between December 2012 and April 2013, temperatures are expected to return to normal seasonal levels for the Ontario tobacco belt along with most of Ontario. Historically, the hottest temperatures in the Ontario tobacco belt were recorded on July 9, 1936 with Delhi registering temperatures up to 40.6 °C or 105.1 °F. With the current humidex system, the temperatures recorded on July 9, 1936 would have been more like 45.6 °C (114.1 °F) due to greater weather detection technology.
Read more about this topic: Ontario Tobacco Belt
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)