It's almost as though Mother Nature was saving her final major punch of this current deep freeze for last. Her concluding act: a wind chill warning for the GTA.
They're rarely issued for this part of Ontario and come only when temperatures are at such an extreme that tissue damage or even death is a real possibility for those outside for more than 10 minutes.
It also depends on where you live. Those up north are used to much colder conditions than we are and their range is different than ours. (See chart below.)
With wind chills around -23 to-30 most of Friday, that threshold has been reached and in the afternoon, the warning that had been in place for other areas of the province flew blew in here.
The caveat extends from Windsor to Kingston and includes Toronto, Halton, Peel, Pickering, Oshawa and Southern Durham Region. The coldest temperatures are expected at night, and officials are warning if you have to go anywhere after sundown, get there fast.
It was all part of another bitter day in the GTA. Residents woke up to a familiar dose of frigid reality, with temperatures reading -22C before sunup and wind chills at a numbing -30. And things didn't heat up much during the day.
How do they measure wind chill?
As if you haven't been punished enough - and those without heat in
the blackout certainly were - it will be -17C outside overnight and the winds will make it worse.
There's still at least one more day of this bitter chill to come, as the extreme cold weather alert continues.
Saturday is expected to be another miserable one, with highs touching -7C but a bitter cold night of -16C.
But as temperatures slowly start to warm up, we'll pay for it with another big storm. A system that may get stalled over the GTA could bring snow for up to 12 hours starting around 6pm Saturday and continuing right into Sunday morning.
By the time it all ends, we could be shovelling out from another 7-15 centimetres locally, and you'll be clearing much of that away in the still chilly final day of your weekend.
Here's the timeline:
2pm Saturday: Light snow, 2-3 cm. Temperature: -6C to -8C
8pm Saturday: Steady snow, 5-8 cm. Temperature: -8C
2am Sunday: Light snow, another 1-3 cm. Temperature: -6 to -8C
10 am Sunday: Tapers to flurries, about another 1 cm. Temperature: -4C, the high for the day and far more moderate than we've seen this week.
Temperatures will continue to rise slowly throughout next week and by Thursday, we should finally hit the plus side of the scale, with highs from +2 to +5C.
It's expected to be accompanied by rain, which could help wash some of the snow and ice away.
So don't despair. There are better days ahead. You'll just need to bundle up a bit more and keep shovelling until they get here.
See the 7-day forecast
Read
meteorologist Michael Kuss' latest blog on the cold spell
From the archives:
What was the coldest day ever recorded in Canada?
When is a Wind Chill Warning issued?
South Central &
Southern Ontario
(including
Toronto
and the GTA): Values are -30 or lower
Eastern and
Northern Ontario
: Values are -40 or lower
Far
Northern Ontario
: Values are -45 or lower
Danger Zones
-27C to -44: Frostbite and hypothermia risk increases with time spent outside.
-45 or lower: Exposed flesh freezes in minutes and hypothermia risk reaches crisis stage.
Source: Environment Canada