Weather At Beach Side Bed and Breakfast Kelligrews Newfoundland Canada

Climate of Conception Bay South - one of the warmest in Canada

Climatic data supports peoples' intuition that Conception Bay South has one of the most livable climates in Newfoundland. St. John's has the distinction of being the third warmest city in Canada. Conception Bay South, being in somewhat of a rain and wind shadow, is even warmer and drier than St. John's.

In fact, Conception Bay South ranks with Stephenville-Robinsons area as having the best climate in Newfoundland for farming and gardening. The reasons are, the town has many more hours of direct and indirect solar radiation and the landscape captures considerable extra heat re-radiated off the ocean by the very low horizon sunsets.

Climatic Variable CBS St. John's

Degree days above 5º 1400* 1200*

Annual Precipitation 1200mm 1450mm

Duration of growing season 200 days 180

Length of high summer 60 days 40 days

Last day of winter April 10 April 20

Mean air temp (July) 17º C 14º C

Mean air temp (October) 9º C 6º C

Windiness in Conception Bay South (except for a few locations along the shore) is well below the Newfoundland average. On a microclimatic scale, the high percentage of natural woodlands and cultivated trees, gullies and promontories mean that windiness is not a serious problem throughout most of the town from an outdoor recreational standpoint. The reason being that CBS lies in the lee of the uplands of the Avalon Plateau and is more or less protected from most winds, except the northwesterlies (which are rarely strong enough and account for less than 10% of the annual wind direction).

In terms of livability, the wind regime of Conception Bay South provides many advantages over the communities in Newfoundland. Moving around the compass, the attributes are as follows:

In summer the town is protected from the cool northwesters. Although, the sheltered landscape captures more from the northeasterly snowstorms, there is less of a problem with snow drifting (especially since much of the landscape is well treed and broken up with broad gullies and ridges).
The easterly (on shore) winds usually shroud St. John's in fog. These winds, in later winter and early spring often choke the St. John's harbour with pack ice and also bring freezing rain to most of the Avalon Peninsula. By contrast, easterly winds are generally benign in Conception Bay South; such that the town is virtually fog-free, ice-free and has a very low risk of catastrophic freezing rain damage to trees and powerlines.
Southwesterly winds bring mild, and often wet weather to the region. However, to a noticeable extent, the semicircle of hills divert the moisture-laden air masses over or around Conception Bay South which explains why Conception Bay South gets 250 mm less rain than St. Johns.
For the most part, Conception Bay South is protected from all but the strongest westerly winds. Nevertheless, from a recreational point of view, the 20 km walking trail along the town's curved coastline has long stretches sheltered from the westerlies. There is probably no more comforting and beautiful sight than to watch the white caps in the bay starting very close to shore.
The town is exposed to northwesterly winds but these winds are generally benign and account for less than 10% of the annual direction of winds. However, these salt-laden winds serve to reduce the length of the asper (snow-free) season as well as provide a natural source of nutrients.