Temperatures drop to well below normal this week

It was a beautiful weekend in southern Quebec including the Bishop's University Campus in Lennoxville. The sunshine and mild temperatures began to slowly eat away at the piles of snow in the Townships. (Photo: Maggie Lowson)

It was a very mild weekend in southern Quebec with warm sunshine and high temperatures well above freezing in the plus 4 or 5C range. Lots of sunshine resulted in plenty of melting with the first all out assault on the snow pack in over a month. It was windy with gusts at Trudeau Airport up to 80km/h on Saturday, much lighter Sunday up to 50km/h. Today will be another breezy day out of the southwest up to 40km/h and much colder with high temperatures pretty much where they are currently, -7C. It is absolutely frigid on the Prairies for late February and some of that cold air will begin to filter into eastern Canada this week. This morning Regina is -34C, Saskatoon -31C and Edmonton -27C.

It will get progressively colder each day this week in Montreal with a continued threat for light snow showers or flurries. No big accumulations are expected with the best chance of measurable snow on Wednesday morning when an arctic boundary crosses the St. Lawrence Valley. There could be a brief snow squall, I will get a better estimate of the timing as we get closer. In the meantime temperatures will range from -7C for highs to -12C for lows. Once we get into the colder air by Wednesday, lows will drop into the -20's through the end of the week with cold daytime highs in the high minus teens.