Prairies locked into extreme cold

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 05 Januari 2014 | 21.48

Extremely cold, dense air has enveloped a wide swath of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, as well as parts of northeastern Alberta, and will be descending today upon much of the U.S. Midwest.

Over the next couple of days, the polar air will even reach as far south as the Gulf Coast, and also east to southern Ontario and the U.S. Northeast.

Wind chill warnings are also in effect for northwestern Ontario, as another blast of Arctic air invaded the region Saturday night. Temperatures are expected to plummet to –30 C to –35 C. With wind chills, it will feel more like –40 C Saturday night and into Sunday morning.

Much of Saskatchewan and Manitoba are under extreme wind chill warnings, where residents are shivering through temperatures in the -40s — feeling closer to -50 C in the wind.

The potentially record-low temps are heightening fears of frostbite and hypothermia.

The deep freeze in the Prairies is nothing new to residents of Winnipeg who have been hearing about frostbite warnings for four weeks now. The kind of cold people are experiencing can freeze skin in under 10 minutes.

One of the coldest places in Canada on Saturday night was Newfoundland, which was hit with a strong blizzard Friday, followed by temperatures reaching -30 C with the wind chill. To make matters worse, thousands of people were left without power following a fire at a substation.

While the provincial utility said it made a lot of progress overnight to restore power, some customers could be left in the dark and cold until Tuesday. About 25,000 Newfoundland Power customers remained without electricity Sunday morning. About 190,000 had lost power at the height of the outage on Saturday.

Newfoundland Power said 60-minute rolling outages are now taking place to conserve power as the system load grows.

Several flights were cancelled in St. John's and the city announced it was opening a warming centre after roughly half the island lost power. Other municipalities opened public buildings for people needing warmth as some coped with digging out from as much as 40 centimetres of snow.    

Elsewhere in the country, people in southern Ontario are bracing for another snow storm. Snow is already falling in some areas but it is expected to intensify later in the day and into Sunday night.

Some areas will be hit with mixed precipitation. Toronto and Ottawa are under a freezing rain warning. Areas northwest of both cities could see anywhere from 10 to 20 centimetres of snow.

South of the border, bitterly cold temperatures blowing into the U.S. Midwest and Northeast in the coming days are likely to set records.

The frigid air began Sunday and was expected last for at least two more days. The cold mass of air could be funnelled as far south as the Gulf Coast because of what one meteorologist called a "polar vortex," a counterclockwise-rotating
pool of cold, dense air.


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