Tuesday afternoon Environment Canada issued extreme cold warnings for areas in northern, central and eastern Saskatchewan, and much of those warnings remained Wednesday morning.
Affected areas as of Wednesday at 8 a.m. included regions directly east of Regina and Saskatoon, like Moosomin, Yorkton, Kamsack, Humboldt, Melfort, Hudson Bay and their surrounding areas. Neither of the two main cities were under extreme cold warnings.
However, areas north of Saskatoon, including Prince Albert, La Ronge, Pelican Narrows and the entire northern region of the province were included in the weather agency’s warnings.
“A cold, Arctic air mass is spreading southward bringing extreme wind chill values with it,” the warning read. “As cloud clears behind a strong cold front (Tuesday) evening, temperatures will drop rapidly and northerly winds will increase with gusts up to 60 (kilometres per hour) possible.
“These plunging temperatures and gusty winds will give wind chill values of -40 C to -45 overnight and into Wednesday morning. These extreme cold values will moderate early Wednesday afternoon.”
No regions in western or southern Saskatchewan were affected by the cold warnings.
Regina’s forecasted high for Thursday is to be -14 C, while Friday’s is -1; Saskatoon is predicted to reach a high of -10 C on Thursday and -4 on Friday.
The Environment Canada alert page can be found here.