Montrealers, you survived 1 of the longest cold streaks on record

If you think the cold snap that gripped Montreal thispast week is unprecedented, you now have statistics to back you up.

From Dec. 27 to Jan. 1, the maximum temperature in Montreal did not rise above 17 C. This six-day stretch is the longest such cold streak on record, based ondata going back 146 years.

ThankRolf Campbell, a software designer in Ottawa, for this historical tidbit.

For years, Campbell has been tweeting outextreme weather trivia for 30 Canadian cities, based on datahe analyzes with software he wrote himself.

Here's another tidbit Campbell published on his Montreal-specific Twitter account, @YUL_Weather: this New Year's Day hadthe coldest wind chill in 61 years.

Campbell, who has always had a passion for weather statistics, started tweetinghis findings because he found most weather services lacking in historical perspective.

"They just say today was 25 degrees, but they don't say, 'Wow, we hadn't had a day like this in years,'" he said.

"It's nice to get a confirmation that what we're experiencing is normal or abnormal."

To find notable statistics, each dayCampbell's software fetches weather datafrom Environment Canada.

It then tests the numbers for 200 types of extreme weather events.

If it finds something noteworthyfor example, a temperature streak or rainfall in a historical top 10 it crafts a tweet based on a template, which Campbell decides whetherto send out.

To find the current sixday streak for Montreal, the software looked for patterns at all temperature thresholds.

Minus 17 C was the maximum temperature that looked "the most dramatic," he said.

He said90 per cent of tweets fromhis accounts are generated by his program.

Last week, CBC Montreal reported that the current cold snap was not very remarkable when viewed historically.

The 1970shad many more days that were extremely cold. However, that data was based on days in whichthe minimum temperature hit 20 C or less.

Singling out maximum temperaturesgives a more accurate view of how cold it really was for days at a time, Campbell said.