Jasper, like much of the province, came out of a multi-day deep freeze earlier this week.
As much of a relief as that was, it was immediately followed by a snowfall warning with more snow predicted for the remainder of the week.
“We hit a low even [Monday] morning of -36 C, but then, of course, the warm air with the snow and the cloud came in,” said Alysa Pederson, meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
There were three days when the temperatures went below -40 C, starting with the coldest day on Jan. 12. The thermometer sunk to -41.6 C that night, improving slightly to -40.1 C the next and then bottoming out again to -41.5 C on Jan. 14.
None of those temperatures considered the windchill factor. Winds made some places feel closer to -50 C during this period.
A polar vortex brought frigid Arctic air and spread it across the province last week.
It was -30 C or colder starting on Jan. 11 and ending on Jan. 15.
“We haven't seen temperatures and lows in 50 years that have hit -40 C,” Pederson said.
There were four days where the daytime highs didn’t get above -20 C, which was milder than much of Alberta. Unfortunately, she added, most of the province barely got to -30 C.
Checking the data, it was 1972 the last time that Edmonton experienced such an extended cold snap. There was a recorded -37 C in 2020 and in 1996 as well. This rare phenomenon generally occurs every 20 to 30 years.
Pederson said the last notable cold snap was in December 2022 when Jasper experienced five days of daytime highs of -28 C.
“That cold snap, I would say, for Jasper itself was actually a colder stretch than what we just had.”
The freeze also put a strain on the province’s electrical grid, causing the activation of daily Emergency Alerts to warn of the possibility of rotating power outages starting on Jan. 13.
The last grid alert ended on Monday as increasing wind and solar power generation contribution relief to the burden that the system was experiencing, according to the Alberta Electric System Operator.
The freeze did wreak some damage, however. The Municipality of Jasper reported that one of its Jasper Transit buses had a broken window, most likely because of the cold. With another bus previously offline for maintenance, the last of its fleet of three vehicles was inaccessible on Saturday morning because of the extreme cold. Transit service was canceled and didn’t resume until mid-afternoon that day.
Around town, Marmot Basin decided to close for the day on Saturday as did a few other businesses. The ski hill reopened on Sunday.
In Edmonton, WestJet canceled nearly 200 flights in total because the cold made its deicing fluid ineffective.
By Tuesday, the daytime high was back up to -12 C with snowfall up to 10 cm in town. The rest of this week was forecast to have highs between -12 C and -19 C and overnight lows down to -29 C.
For the next two weeks or so, the weather trend looks to flip back to conditions that we had prior to the deep freeze. Pederson said temperatures should be more normal or potentially above normal as Alberta goes into the end of the month and the start of February.
However, she noted this year’s El Niño, with a lower ice pack at the Arctic Ocean and the jet stream weaker than it should be.
“When that's weaker, the Arctic air is more likely to intrude and come way down south,” she said, noting that parts of Baffin Island and Nunavut are experiencing temperatures of 8 C, forcing schools to close because of the amount of watermelt on the ground.
This comes after the province had the warmest December on record.
“We're getting a little used to the warmth here, and then all of a sudden, it's cold and it's like it's never happened before,” Pederson said. “February is still a month that we can get a cold snap.”
