TORONTO -- We have good news for the many parts of Canada that are still struggling through unusually and even historically cold temperatures: The end is in sight.
Yes, spring is still nearly five weeks away – but according to Environment Canada senior climatologist Dave Phillips, it won't even take one week for most of the country to see a big warmup.
"There is light at the end of the tunnel," Phillips said Sunday on CTV News Channel.
Much of Canada has spent the past two weeks under a polar vortex – the term given to cold air from the Arctic pushing much farther south than usual due to a weakened jet stream.
The vortex helped create the coldest temperature recorded anywhere in Canada in nearly four years. A temperature of -51.9 C was recorded in Wekweeti, N.W.T. on Feb. 7.
The effects haven't stopped at the treeline, though, or even at the Canada-U.S. border. Phillips said the vortex has "covered a good chunk of North America … from British Columbia to the Yukon down to Mississippi."
It was early Sunday afternoon at Phillips' home in Ontario when he spoke to CTV News Channel. A quick glance at the conditions across Canada at that time shows just how far the vortex extends.
The warmest major cities in the country were Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., where the temperature had already reached the freezing mark and was expected to rise by a degree or two as the day progressed, turning significant snowfall into mixed precipitation. On a normal Valentine's Day, though, both of those cities experience high temperatures around 8 C.
With forecast highs only a few degrees below freezing, it wasn't shaping up to be that much colder than a usual Feb. 14 in Atlantic Canada. Likewise for the heavily populated areas of southern Ontario and southern Quebec.
In the North, though, and especially on the Prairies, the conditions were abnormally cold even for the dead of winter.
Four of the five largest cities in Manitoba set daily low-temperature records on Saturday. In Winnipeg, the record that was broken dated back nearly to Confederation: the cold bottomed out at -37.9 C on Feb. 13, 1879, and never got colder on that date until this time around when it hit -38.8 C.
It was also the coldest Feb. 13 on record in more than 15 communities in Saskatchewan. In Melfort, Sask., the mercury plunged to -41.7 C, more than two degrees below the low on the previous coldest Feb. 13, which occurred in 1936.
Although similar cold continued to grip the Prairies and the North, Phillips said forecasts are showing significantly warmer conditions before the end of the week.
In Edmonton, temperatures are expected to still drop down around -20 C overnight through Wednesday – but as of Sunday, forecasts called for the Alberta capital to experience above-freezing temperatures on Friday for the first time since Jan. 20.
"It's been a long time coming," Phillips said.
Looking ahead, Phillips said he expects spring conditions to be normal in most of Canada, maybe even slightly warmer – and while March 20 is still more than a month away, he doesn't foresee the polar vortex returning before then.
"You can't write the obituary on winter quite yet, but I think the toughest part of winter is clearly behind us," he said.
