Cold temperatures sweep back into Manitoba

Bring the thermals back out of the drawer.

Southern Manitobans enjoyed a brief hiatus from the bitter cold that had gripped the province for most of the past two weeks but that's about to change again.

A cold front is expected to sweep through the region, bringing a strong north wind and plummeting temperatures on Wednesday. And Environment Canada says the deep freeze will continue through the weekend and beyond.

That forecast applies to the entire southern half of the province, from Grand Rapids to the U.S. border.

The strong winds are likely to create poor visibility in blowing snow for some areas.

The cold follows a weather system that brought unseasonably mild temperatures to southern Manitoba since Sunday. It also brought a band of freezing rain that ran across the midsection of southern Manitoba, from the Minnedosa and Dauphin area through the southern interlake and on to the Ontario border.

Winnipeggers had enjoyed daytime highs between –6 C to –10 C since Sunday but temperatures will fall throughout Wednesday to –17 C with a wind chill that will make it feel more like –29 by the afternoon. Winds will gust up to 70 km/h by noon.

Daytime highs over the next few days will be in the –20 C to –24 C range with wind chills of –30 to –35.

Further north in the Churchill–York–Tadoule Lake region, Environment Canada has issued an extreme cold warning.

Temperatures around –30 C or colder are expected Wednesday and Thursday.

Extreme wind chills of –45 to –50 will arrive Wednesday but a strengthening wind will bring even colder wind chills on Thursday.