Bitter temperatures to get even colder
WATERLOO REGION — Brace yourself. The extreme cold weather is set to get even colder.
Environment Canada issued a special weather statement forecasting a cold snap from late Thursday through to Saturday.
The mercury is expected to plummet to the extreme cold warning criteria of -30 C in Waterloo Region and Wellington County on Thursday night into Friday and again Friday night into Saturday as a bitterly cold northwesterly flow moves into the area.
The cold snap is forecast to end by Sunday as a southwesterly flow develops.
Early January’s frigid weather follows the record-setting cold of late December.
December started off fairly warm in Waterloo Region, but then the mercury took a steep dive.
For almost the entire first week of the month, the weather was mild for the season with some double digit temperatures, according to the University of Waterloo weather station.
Then things got colder, then really cold.
The last six days of the month, the daily high temperatures didn’t even get above the average daily low temperatures for those days.
In the end, it was a bit more than three degrees below average — making it the coldest December since 2000.
The cold streak at the end of the month might turn out to be one of the longest seen in the region since record keeping began.
The maximum temperature in December was 10.6 C; the minimum was a bone-chilling -28.1 C.
The colder temperatures meant most of the snow that fell stayed on the ground, but in fact there wasn’t much precipitation during December.
Snowfall came in at 31 centimetres, just a little less than the average of 37.2 for the month.