Temperatures dropping below the mid-teens. People wearing puffy winter coats as if it’s still January. Social media crawlers complaining about the decidedly stereotypical Canadian weather. If it seems like the climate outside your front door doesn’t really feel like summer, you’re not alone.

Geoff Coulson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said it is “notably cooler than normal” during this time of the year — and it’s actually part of a larger trend that began a few months ago. “April was cooler than normal, May was cooler than normal,” he remarked. “It looks like unfortunately that pattern has stayed pretty much uninterrupted as we head into the month of June.”

Coulson wouldn’t attribute the trend to a cyclical pattern like El Nino, saying the system, in which a large patch of warm water in the Pacific Ocean can affect seasonal weather across North America, has been very weak so far this year. Rather, the chilly weather to be coming from stubborn regional patterns. “From time to time we can get these storm tracks that become very persistent,” he noted. “Certainly the one that we’ve had to deal with over the last few months has been the one that’s been over the lower Great Lakes,” with systems coming in from the American Midwest.

Although the weather agency is forecasting warmer temperatures this weekend, in the area of the low 20s, the cooler weather is expected to return and “reassert itself,” Coulson said, along with some scattered showers.

The weather around this time of year, although noticeably unusual, isn’t exactly out of place.

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Doug Gillham, a meteorologist at The Weather Network, said that “in isolation, what we’ve seen so far in the first five days of June, is (that) while it’s colder than normal, it’s not extraordinary,” noting that the immediate post-spring period always has a “lack of warmth.” But, according to Gillham, this doesn’t discount the fact that it actually is “unusually cool.”

In terms of forecast for the rest of the summer, Gillham said he is expecting “a summer that is significantly different” than last year — which means that Torontonians can basically expect similar cool temperatures to persists for the first half of the summer, and won’t really have hot weather until the latter half.

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However, despite the cooler temperatures this year in comparison to 2018, it appears as though there’s no difference in terms of electricity usage. According to Tori Gass, spokesperson for Toronto Hydro, the agency isn’t able “to measure the specific uses of electricity; we can only measure the amount of electricity being used.” As of Wednesday morning, she said that “right now it’s very similar to last year on this day.”