As the deep freeze comes to an end, here’s how the cold spell stacks up historically

Edmonton daytime highs in February 2025. (Josh Classen/CTV News Edmonton)

With temperatures (finally) warming up, let’s take a look back at the lengthy cold spell that dominated the first 19 days of February.

Not surprisingly, every single day from Feb. 1 to Feb. 19 was colder than average and we ended up about 12 degrees colder than the historical average for that timeframe.

The long-term average high for Feb. 1-19 is -4 C. In 2025, Edmonton had an average high of -16 C. For daily lows, we came in at -24 C in 2025.

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That’s 10 C below the long-term average of -14 C.

But it’s not the coldest start to February in the past decade because 2019 was colder and 2021 was very similar to this year.

If you look at the number of days with extremely cold temperatures, both 2019 and 2021 had more in the first 19 days of February.

2019 had eight days with a high below -20 C and 2021 had five. This year: only three.

2019 and 2021 also had more days with morning lows in the -30s.

End of February forecast

Looking ahead, we’re expecting warm temperatures to stick around through to the end of February.

Daytime highs are forecast to be in the 2- to 7-degree range from Feb. 21 through Feb. 28.

That’s similar to 2021 when the deep freeze ended on Feb. 18 and mild temperatures took over for the remainder of the month.

2019 was a different story. Temperatures moderated for Feb. 19 and 20.

But we slipped back into some cold air for Feb. 23 to the 26.