Special weather statement issued with strong winds expected

Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for most of Saskatchewan.

The affected areas include anywhere in the province south of Meadow Lake.

The most significant weather pattern should be strong winds between 60 and 80 kilometres per hour.

Gusts could get up to 100 km/h.

“The winds are the main issue with this system. It looks like we’ll see the high winds start to develop in the southwest corner Wednesday morning and quickly spread eastward toward the Manitoba border by Wednesday afternoon,” said meteorologist Jason Knight.

As well, the clipper system could bring snow and freezing rain.

But even though the weather office is not expecting high amounts of precipitation, the wind would create poor travel conditions.

“Certainly it’s going to be miserable at times with the high winds and if you get a flurry with that or a squall with even a couple centimetres, conditions will become quite poor,” Knight said.

Conditions should improve after Thursday and Knight forecasts a return to what has been a mild winter thus far.

“Temperatures (should be) continuing 10 degrees above normal,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of weather of note beyond that so a fairly mild January continues.”

The nasty weather interrupts what has been an unseasonably warm winter thus far.

According to Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips, Regina would see about 20 days of temperatures at or below -20 C by this point of the winter. This year, there have been five.

“You’ve just got to love this weather. We really like it when we cheat winter,” Phillips told the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Tuesday. “I mean, come on. I mean, it’s like (winter is) missing in action.”

The season has defied expectations of a La Nina winter, which would have brought harsh conditions.

“But what makes it so much more pleasant is the fact this was going to be the winter from hell,” Phillips said. “Hunker down around Halloween and then wake up at Easter.”

Once Wednesday’s clipper system passes, the temperature in Regina will reach a high of -8 C. That is still three degrees warmer than normal, Phillips said.

However, a cold snap is expected for late January. It won’t be anything record-breaking, Phillips said, but overnight lows could fall below -20 C and highs reaching -12 C.

But he expects it to be short-lived.

“My sense is it might just be a week, you know, 10 days at the most. Then we would go back into this relentless kind of warming,” Phillips said.

“We’re at the dead of winter right now. This is the time you should celebrate. There’s more winter behind you than ahead of you.”