Manitoba plagued by bitter cold, but forecaster says there’s warmer weather on the horizon

It’s very, very cold in southern Manitoba, but a local forecaster says — believe it or not — we’ve actually been lucky, despite the extreme cold warnings blanketing large parts of the province.
Scott Kehler of Weatherlogics told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg that while Manitoba’s temperatures have consistently been in the -20s C in recent days, the cold snap is nothing compared with what’s happening in a couple of provinces to the west.
“Edmonton has been just wildly cold — four consecutive days below -40 C, (and) the second coldest day ever at their airport, -46.6 C,” he said.
“So while it’s cold here, we’re actually dodging the worst of it.”
And while you might not believe it if you’ve spent any time outdoors lately, things are actually on the upswing for Manitoba when it comes to the temperature.
“It looks like the cold snap may end a little bit earlier than expected,” Kehler said.
“The rest of this week is going to remain very cold, but as we get into (the) weekend, or the early part of next week, it looks like we’ll return to normal — or maybe even above normal.”
The other good news? This is likely to be the worst cold snap we see all winter, although Kehler acknowledged there’s a chance it could come back later in the season.
“This stretch we’re in right now might actually be one of the worst periods of the winter. We’ll see if it actually is able to return at some point in February, but right now we’re not actually seeing any signs of it.”
While residents wait for the warmer weather, Manitoba Hydro is working hard at determining how the extreme cold affects the local power grid — especially in light of emergency alerts being issued over the weekend out west, urging Albertans to conserve power during the deep freeze.
Hydro’s Bruce Owen told Connecting Winnipeg that extreme temperatures are to be expected on the Prairies.
“We know that Manitobans are going to be using more energy — both electrical and natural gas — to stay warm,” Owen said.
“In the past, for instance, we’ll postpone maintenance at our generating stations around our transmission system, because we know we don’t want to interrupt power to anybody.”
In case power does go out in the dead of winter, however, Owen suggests residents keep a simple emergency kit at the ready.