Sask. cold snap continues, but warmer weather is on the horizon

Saskatchewan will have to endure the cold for a bit longer.

Environment Canada issued extreme cold warnings for much of the province on Sunday, and those warnings remained in effect on Friday.

Brad Vrolijk, lead forecaster for Environment Canada, said conditions will not improve “any time quickly,” warning that the bitterly cold temperatures are expected to persist into next week. Overnight lows in the -30 C range are expected through the Family Day long weekend.

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“We might even see some of the coldest weather at the beginning of next week as another push of Arctic air drops south through the prairies,” Vrolijk said.

The good news, he said, is that this might be the last real stretch of bitterly cold weather for a while, if not the entire season.

“If we can make it a few more days, there is hope on the horizon,” Vrolijk said.

“By the end of next week, we will likely see daytime highs coming back to freezing, if not even above zero,” Vrolijk explained.

Meanwhile, Vrolijk explained, the province is seeing a milder part of the cold stretch.

“This is kind of the warm days, and then it’ll get very cold again to start next week, and then a big warm up by the end of the week,” the forecaster said.

He said the extreme cold warnings should lift at the beginning of next week.

Saskatoon infrastructure holding strong in extreme cold

The most recent cold snap has seen temperatures drop below -30 C in Saskatoon, with wind chill values around -40 C.

The extreme cold has not affected the City of Saskatoon’s infrastructure all that much, according to Saskatoon’s water director Russ Munro.

“The cold just makes everything a little bit harder,” Munro said in an interview with 650 CKOM.

“We can sometimes see an increase in water main breaks after an extended cold snap like this, particularly with the frost penetration.”

Fortunately, that isn’t the case this year.

From the beginning of the year until the week of February 10, Saskatoon has seen 32 water main breaks, which is down from the three-year average of 37.

–with files from 650 CKOM’s Alex Brown