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Saskatchewan entering in a long-haul deep freeze.
Environment Canada’s extreme cold warnings stretched across much of the province on Monday, including Regina and Saskatoon. Environment and Climate Change Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips joined The Evan Bray Show with guest host Brent Loucks on Monday, warning that this will be the longest-lasting cold snap of the winter.
He said the province can expect that daytime highs won’t even crack -20 C for at least the next week.
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Listen to David Phillips on The Evan Bray Show:
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
BRENT LOUCKS: What are we expecting weather-wise in Saskatchewan over the next couple of weeks?
DAVID PHILLIPS: I’m skewing everything towards being just the glass-half-full kind of guy. I’m always looking for the bright moment, but this has been a challenge. What can I say that will cheer Saskatchewan residents up? They are going into a deep freeze – the longest deep freeze of the winter. I look ahead and see the days are getting longer, and the sun’s higher in the sky, but it is just bone-chilling cold.
This is not even a polar vortex; it is good old-fashioned Yukon air, Alaskan air, and maybe some Siberian air mixed into it, and it has just moved right down across all of Canada.
I would say that this is probably the coldest week coming up in all of Canada, particularly in the west. We’re seeing, for example, temperatures in Saskatchewan that will be lucky to get above -20 C during the day and a lot of temperatures around -30 C at night. I’m not even embellishing it with a wind chill. I’ve looked at it in the last two or three months, and there haven’t been any warm, warm (days), but at least the cold has been broken up.
But we see in December, and January, for example, there were maybe three or four days of melting temperatures, but February, it is the duration of it. You could possibly go for the whole month of February without seeing a melting temperature, and that’s tough to take.
The longest stretch I’ve seen so far this winter is maybe two days in a row where temperatures during the afternoon were below -20 C, but I see seven days in a row where that’s going to be the case (this time). So that’s why I’m saying this is going to be the top one.
If we can survive this week and maybe into next week, I think things look a little better after that. But boy, there’s no systems from the United States or from the Pacific to keep this cold air back north. The jet stream is way down to Utah and Colorado, so it just means that all of Canada is in this cold, cold air from the north, and it just doesn’t want to leave.
LOUCKS: Let’s look for a plus in this. No significant snow in the forecast at least, right?
PHILLIPS: You are right. We see a little flurries here and there, but I see just seven, eight, maybe 10 days of bone-chilling cold, but some sunshine.
At this time of the year, because the days are getting longer, I think they’re almost more than three minutes and 40 seconds longer each day. By the end of the month, it will be four minutes longer every day. The sun’s a little higher in the sky – it’s about 24 degrees from above the horizon. By the end of the month it will be 34 degrees, so even walking on University (Drive) you will feel that heat on your skin, but there’s lots of snow.
Another positive thing is that I look across the province and I see anywhere from 25 to 40 centimetres of snow sitting on the ground. Now sometimes what that does is prevent the melting, or prevent the kind of moderation of temperatures.
You get a warm air mass coming up from the south or the Pacific, and the first dibs on that are going to melt the snow rather than warm the air, so that may delay it a bit. But boy, that is such good news for farmers ranchers and forest firefighters. There might be a bit of worry by flood forecasters, but we don’t know how that huge amount of snow is going to disappear. If it goes gradually, not a problem.
LOUCKS: We’ve got 38 days until spring arrives, is that right?
PHILLIPS: You’ve got it right! That is very positive and you’re absolutely right. We just have to endure this cold. It’s not record cold – the coldest moment of this winter was Jan. 19 and 20.
So even in February, we’re not seeing the real brutal cold. It’s the duration, the persistence of it. It just doesn’t want to leave home. It’s like an unwanted house guest. It just won’t leave, and we’d like to kick it out, but boy, it’s going to take its sweet time.
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