What was done
For a number of locations within the Prairie Ecozone of western Canada, blizzard events were extracted from meteorological records for the period 1953-1997 and analyzed for trends in occurrence and severity.

What was learned
No significant trends were found in central and eastern locations.  However, there was a significant downward trend in blizzard frequency in the more westerly part of the prairies; and the author notes that "this trend is consistent with results found by others that indicate a decrease in cyclone frequency over western Canada."  He also notes that the blizzards that do occur "exhibit no trend in the severity of their individual weather elements."

What it means
"The trends found," in the words of the author, "serve to illustrate that the changes in extreme weather events anticipated under Climate Change may not always be for the worse."  Indeed, as we have indicated numerous times elsewhere on our website, warmer is generally better than cooler nearly everywhere, as demonstrated most recently by the study highlighted in our Editorial of 11 June 2003.