A brutally cold airmass has descended upon Moose Jaw and south central Saskatchewan sending the mercury plummeting to bone-chilling temperatures.
Environment and Climate Change Canada forecasts that the temperature in Moose Jaw will slide to -23°C this afternoon, before dropping to -35°C overnight feeling closer to -49 when the wind chill is factored in.
"We have a pretty potent large-scale pattern that is essentially allowing for repeated pushes of Arctic air to be shunted down the Alberta foothills sliding into Saskatchewan," said Rose Carlsen, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, noting that warmer temperatures are on the way later this week.
While -35°C is cold, it would need to get a tad bit colder for Moose Jaw to break the cold weather record for December 6. The lowest temperature recorded for December 6 was -36.7°C set back in 1956.
Though, it will feel much colder overnight due to the 20km/h south wind that has been forecasted for tonight.
"The combination of not crazy winds, but when your temperatures are -35°C, it doesn't take a whole lot of wind for wind chills to take a dive overnight and we're actually forecasting a -49 wind chill overnight for Moose Jaw," continued Carlsen.
Thankfully, temperatures are going to rebound on Thursday and through the weekend as a trough of warmer air, from the Pacific Northwest, enters the prairies.