Most Canadians will probably welcome the official start of spring this week but for the minority who can't get enough of snow and cold, Environment Canada is already providing a prediction of what next year's winter might feel like.

Although they're not considered to be even close to accurate or reliable, Environment Canada does prepare forecasts up to a year in advance and has released its first guess at what December through February 2009 has in store.

The early projection is calling for normal temperatures and above-normal amounts of precipitation for most of the country, although southern Ontario communities — with the exception of Ottawa — are forecast to get warmer than normal weather.

The territories and large chunks of British Columbia and Quebec are looking to be colder than normal, and only about a quarter of the communities for which Environment Canada has forecasts are expected to get less rain and snow than normal.

It will be several more months before the winter forecast gets more reliable, and at this point Environment Canada considers their educated guesses to be "not statistically better than pure chance and hence the confidence on the forecast is very low."

"The users of those forecasts will take a peek at it but I don't think many users make million-dollar decisions based on that — at least they shouldn't," said senior climatologist David Phillips.

Environment Canada is a lot more confident about its forecast for the start of spring over the next month, and is calling for below-normal temperatures across the country.

Through May, the forecast is colder than normal for the territories, the provinces west of Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and in the northern half of Quebec.

Most of the country is also expected to get above-average amounts of rain or snow.

It's also early to be making reliable forecasts for the summer, but Environment Canada says it looks as if it will be hotter than normal in British Columbia and the Prairies.

The fall appears to be warmer than normal for British Columbia through Ontario, although Phillips doubts many Canadians would care about a fall forecast anyway.

"The two seasons that are of most interest to people are the summer and winter," he said.

"I define Canadians as ones who worry about winter before you get the summer over with, they're already thinking they're going to have to pay for it (with a bad winter) if it's been kind of a delightful summer."