Sask. saw 'dual personality' weather in February: Environment Canada

“Pretty mild, benign and soft.”
 
That’s how Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips is describing Saskatchewan’s winter so far.
 
In the first couple weeks of February, people here might have disagreed. During a 12-day cold snap, it brought two of the coldest days of winter so far, before warming up.
 
Phillips said it then warmed up to an average of three degrees warmer than normal.
 
“I’m sure the potholes are looking pretty big, plentiful and deep and that’s because we saw 11 days in a row where it was almost like maple syrup weather — you know melting during the day but freezing at night,” he told the CJME Morning Show.
 
“It made the kind of month go quickly. If it’s all — you’re sort of in the deep freeze there with the Polar Vortex, boy, the month goes on very slowly. But here we’ve seen the dual personality in February.” 

“Fickle kind of March”

This month will bring much of what Regina has seen already — a swing from cold to not-so-cold.
 
“Typically what we see in March is this playing out of, you know, a couple days — not a couple weeks — of kind of cold and then replaced with some melting, thawing kind of days.”
 
Phillips said the forecast looks warmer than it appeared last week.
 
“We were looking at some really cold temperatures in March,” he said. “We’ve backed off of that. It’s showing colder than normal in the northern part of the province, but in the southern part of the province, it’s showing a little bit milder than normal in March, April, May.”
 
While it may be milder, Phillips added it won’t be the “balmy kind of spring” Saskatchewan experienced last year, which was the warmest on record.
 
He said March will also bring more of the white stuff, as Saskatchewan receives 30 per cent of its annual snowfall after March 1.