Environment Canada says it’s not about how cold it is, but how long this wave of frigid air will stay around that’s unusual.
Meteorologist Alexandre Parent said Wednesday the big chill is affecting the Prairies, Ontario and western Quebec, and was headed for the Maritimes.
But Nova Scotia was already dealing with a winter weather system that snapped hydro poles and caused widespread outages affecting 158,000 customers at one time.
The province’s utility was still working Thursday to complete restoration of power in the province, after the damage from wind gusts of over 100 km/h that began Christmas morning and continued into Boxing Day.
A cold front has since descended in the region, and temperatures have plummeted.
Parent said northern Ontario is hardest hit by the cold snap, with temperatures expected to feel like –50 with the wind chill in some places.
“The size of this cold wave in terms of geographical distribution is quite exceptional for this early in the winter season.
“What’s also exceptional is the duration of this episode,” he said, noting that the extreme cold weather could hang over Quebec for the next seven days.
The extreme cold affects areas from Hudson Bay toward the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, about 600 kilometres northwest of Montreal. (Radio-Canada)
The weather specialist said he had to go back to 1993 to find a similar cold spell between Christmas and Jan 1.
Temperatures were colder then, but the extreme cold didn’t stay around for long.
“The last few years we had one or two days of cold weather, but usually those were compensated by a few days near zero which is not the case this year,” Parent said.
“It’s the span of days with 10 to 15 degrees below normal which are exceptional.”
Early Thursday morning, an Environment Canada map showed extreme cold weather warnings across much of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, a large swath of Ontario and parts of Quebec, as well as special weather statements for Nova Scotia, P.E.I., New Brunswick and parts of Newfoundland and Labrador.
A 77-year-old man died from hypothermia Tuesday after leaving his vehicle following a crash in Hamilton, police said.
A Zamboni attempts to groom the ice surface on the Canada 150 ice rink on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday. A cold snap has caused cracks on the ice surface, forcing the cancellation of hockey games and public skating for now. (Canadian Press/Fred Chartrand)
In Ottawa, extreme cold forced organizers of the Bell Capital Cup international youth hockey tournament to cancel its outdoor games. Matches scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at the Canada 150 rink on Parliament Hill were to be played indoors instead, tournament staff said via Twitter.
In Nova Scotia, Wednesday’s weather forecast predicted wind chill values between –26 and –30, and between –30 and –35 in New Brunswick.
The cold conditions were expected to stick around until the weekend.