Extreme cold warnings in place for entire province

An extreme cold warning is in place for every region of Saskatchewan.

Environment Canada splits Saskatchewan into 32 reporting regions and it issued warnings for all of them Thursday morning, saying wind chill values between -40 C and -50 C were expected thanks to a ridge of high pressure over the Prairies.

“Extreme wind chill values of -40 and colder spread throughout Saskatchewan overnight,” the weather service said in its advisory. “Slight moderation of these extreme wind chill values is expected during the day.

“A system moving through southern Saskatchewan will bring a brief reprieve to the extreme cold wind chills on Friday. But, for many parts of Saskatchewan, extreme cold wind chill values return again for the weekend.”

Environment Canada meteorologist Terri Lang said Thursday is probably the coldest day Saskatchewan will see.

“We have had some other record temperatures set this morning,” she said. “Lucky Lake, Meadow Lake, Outlook, Elbow and other places in and around southern Saskatchewan did set records for the coldest temperature.”

Last Mountain Lake also set a daily record in the province with a temperature of -42, according to Lang.

There is some relief on the horizon, but not much.

“We’re going to see a gradual warming up over the next few days but I don’t want to call it warm. I’m going to call it less cold,” Lang said.

“We may get out of those extreme cold warnings for a day or two as we are looking for another weather system to move through the province on Friday. Into next week, we’re actually going to see some fairly mild temperatures finally coming into the province.”

Lang warns there is still plenty of winter left and brought up the start of last year as a perfect reminder.

“If you remember, February last year was some of the coldest temperatures that we saw,” she said. “So we know that we’ve still got lots of winter ahead of us.”

Environment Canada reminded people to cover up to prevent frostbite, to keep emergency supplies such as blankets and jumper cables in their vehicles, and to keep their pets indoors as much as possible.

— With files from 650 CKOM’s Dallas Dahlseide