Mother Nature threw everything at Canadians on this day in 1984

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There was fog, there was snow, there was rain and there was cold — though not all in the same place.

Reginans shivered through the coldest weather since 1968, while Torontonians saw spring-like weather

CBC Archives · Posted: Dec 29, 2019 8:30 AM ET | Last Updated: December 29

Some Canadians got spring like weather on Dec. 29, 1984. Others, well, they got the usual winter. 1:40

It was a day for parkas and it was also a day for umbrellas, depending on where you lived in Canada.

Thirty-five years ago, Mother Nature had delivered fog, rain, cold and snow to various parts of the country.

And that messy mix of weather in 1984 was cause for a round-up report on The National.

Reporter Claude Adams began the recap in Ottawa, where a thick fog had made getting around the capital a problem.

“[In] some spots, visibility was less than five metres, making any kind of travel hazardous,” he said, as viewers saw hardly any of Ottawa, but plenty of the fog being shown on the screen.

Cold, even for Regina

But some might have preferred fog to the freezing temperatures felt in the Prairies, where conditions were basically as cold as they could be.

“As much as 35 below zero, almost double that with the windchill,” said Adams. “It hasn't been this cold in Regina since 1968.”

Further west in Vancouver, the roads had been made slick with falling snow, leaving buses and cars sliding and skidding on city roads that are not often covered in snow.

Bouncing back to central Canada, it was a completely different story in Toronto and parts of southern Ontario. The mercury had climbed to as high as 15 C during the day.

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“On the shores of Lake Ontario, it was like springtime,” said Adams, noting that it was then the warmest Dec. 29 on record in Toronto.

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