A rush of Arctic air will plunge parts of North America into bitter cold this weekend, bringing heavy snow, strong winds and frigid temperatures to parts of Canada.
Meteorologists say temperatures could plunge by as much as 30 C in parts of the country over the coming days — so if the temperature in your neighbourhood has typically been hovering around 5 C, it could plummet to a shocking –25 C.
“For many places this will be the coldest weekend of the season so far,” said CBC climate specialist Darius Mahdavi.
“Definitely a big change compared to the mild winter most of Canada has been experiencing.”
Wind chills could reach –40 C in northern Alberta and roughly –45 C in parts of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, according to Environment Canada. Abysmal snowy weather already led to pileups on highways and warnings from hospitals in southern Manitoba on Friday.
A big outbreak of Arctic air is about to drop temperatures across North America. But is the ‘polar vortex’ to blame?
In parts of Nunavut, the agency said, it could feel as cold as –58 C over the coming days. Forecasters are expecting significant snowfall for parts of Atlantic Canada and unseasonably cold weather in coastal British Columbia.
“Bitterly cold is probably the best way to word it, but not record-setting it doesn’t look like at this point in time,” said Brian Proctor, an Environment Canada meteorologist based in Edmonton.
The wintry weather is expected to hit the United States hard, too, starting in the Rockies before sweeping east and potentially as far south as upper Florida. It will be so cold, president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday has been moved inside.
‘Arctic outbreak,’ not ‘polar vortex’
The weather spell is being referred to as a polar vortex, but Mahdavi said that’s a bit of a misnomer for what’s happening: the term “polar vortex” describes a massive cyclone of air that is always swirling high in the atmosphere above the North and South Pole.
Cold spells like the one in the forecast this weekend can be caused by a disruption in that vortex. The ring of icy air is being stretched south across North America like a rubber band, which can mess with the winds closer to the surface and allow Arctic air to spill out.
“What we’re really seeing with this particular arctic outbreak is really just that oscillation of that polar vortex and it’s beginning to wobble southeastward, allowing that cold air to really spill down across the Prairies and across into northern Ontario and Quebec,” Proctor told CBC News on Friday.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office from inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday due to forecasts of intense cold weather. ‘The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows,’ Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
These stretching events are happening more in the past decade or so, according to Judah Cohen of Atmospheric Environmental Research. He and others have linked these polar cortex outbreaks to human-caused climate change and decreasing pressure and temperature differences between the Arctic and the rest of the globe.
“This would be one of the coldest outbreaks certainly of the past 10 years, 15 years,” Cohen told The Associated Press.
Those also trigger changes in the jet stream — the river of air that usually brings weather from west to east — that make cold air and weather systems plunge from north to south like a roller coaster.
Environment Canada has warned the risk of conditions like windburn and frostbite increase whenever wind chill values drop below –27 C.
The agency said “extreme cold puts everyone at risk,” but young children, seniors, people with chronic illness, people working outdoors and people who are unhoused are particularly vulnerable. Families are also warned to keep pets indoors.
