Brutal cold settling in for several days, meteorologist warns

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This article was published 29/12/2021 (1521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The deep freeze that settled across Winnipeg Tuesday night was no match for Dallas Jones and her kids.

While many chose to stay inside and wait out the extreme cold warning, Jones, a mother of three, bundled up herself and two of her young kids, and set out on a winter walk, heading down Wolseley Avenue Wednesday afternoon.

In fact, Jones, pulling one child on a sled and watching the other run up ahead, said she was actually surprised to hear it was the coldest day of the season, so far.

“We’re always walking,” she said. “Cold, rain, shine, we’re always walking.”

The cold snap across the Prairies is delivering temperatures in the -40 C range over the next few nights, with below-average temperatures persisting until the new year.

“I think if you ask people who have lived here long enough, I think a lot of them will say that it’s this time of year between Christmas and New Year’s where a plunge often happens… this should not come as a great surprise to many people who live in the Prairies, really,” warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada Natalie Hasell told the Free Press.

“We don’t have any topography that will stop cold air from the Arctic from coming down to southern Manitoba, or past that, for that matter,” Hasell said.

Environment Canada’s extreme cold warning will likely continue until Sunday or Monday, she said. Even then, it willremain colder than usual, and another deep-freeze is likely to come again later before the middle of the month.

With that in mind, Hasell stressed that even though there’s fun to be had in the settled snow, this kind of cold can get very dangerous, very quickly.

“We issue these warnings because the cold has consequences. We’re not issuing the warning because it is cold just in itself, you can tell that if you just get up close to a window (or) open your front door, you’ll know,” she said. “Warnings are issued because it’s a reminder that there is a hazard associated to this weather.”

Take the chance to educate yourself on the signs of cold-related overexposure, which can range from numbness to shortness of breath, and on how to tell someone else might be dealing with hypothermia, which can present itself in a way that makes the victim look drunk or as if they’re in a diabetic episode, she said.

“This is your opportunity to be the good neighbour, check in on your friends and family pay attention to what’s happening around you,” she said.

In the meantime, Jones said she’d continue to take her kids out through whatever the weather had to offer, noting that there was lots to do in the winter and her kids wanted to experience all of it.

“I do know I’d like to take them sledding soon (and) I’m going to take my oldest ice skating,” she said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca