Josh Classen’s forecast: Deep freeze returns and it’s sticking around all week

Snow covers the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton in this aerial photo taken on Jan. 9, 2025. (Cam Wiebe / CTV News Edmonton)

The deep freeze is back. Temperatures slid to the -30 C range in the Edmonton area this morning.

Much of northern and eastern Alberta dipped into the -32 to -35 C range and so it’s no surprise that northern, central and eastern Alberta woke up to an extreme cold warning.

For most areas, the wind has been fairly calm. But, there are wind speeds in the 15-20 km/h range in eastern Alberta. That’s producing wind chills into the mid -40s in east-central Alberta and around -40 across the north.

Edmonton has had a negligible wind chill through the morning hours and we’re expecting relatively light wind through the day (5-10 km/h).

The extreme cold warning should be ended this morning (at least for Edmonton and area) and we’ll get to a high near -17 C this afternoon with some sunshine.

That’s a big drop from the highs of -9 C Saturday and -13 C Sunday.

AND...as expected, this return of arctic air will stick around all week.

We’ll get to a high in the -15 to -18 C range today-Wednesday.

Mornings should moderate somewhat. We’ll be in the -20 to -25 C range for mornings the next few days.

THEN...the bottom of this deep freeze comes late this week.

Mornings slide to the -25 to -30 C range for Friday and the weekend.

Daytime highs near -20 C on Friday and Saturday.

So...we’ve been talking about this since the start of last week. It doesn’t look like we get back even close to average before Feb 20th or 21st.

That still looks to be the case. There’s a decent amount of confidence that we’ll get to highs near 0 C sometime between Feb. 21 and 23.

Bottom line: It’s COLD this week and most of next week with Friday/Saturday being the coldest days.

No significant warming until the end of next week at the earliest.

Here’s the forecast for Edmonton and area:

Today - Sunny with a few clouds.

High: -17

Tonight - Increasing cloud. 60% chance of flurries overnight.

9pm: -21

Tuesday - Mix of sun & cloud.

Morning: -18

Midday: -16

4pm: -19

Wednesday - Mostly cloudy. 40% chance of evening flurries/snow.

Morning Low: -24

Afternoon High: -17

Thursday - Mostly cloudy.

Morning Low: -22

Afternoon High: -18

Friday - Mostly cloudy.

Morning Low: -25

Afternoon High: -20

Saturday - Partly cloudy.

Morning Low: -29

Afternoon High: -20