'The air just feels different': Sask. sees reprieve from fierce winter weather

After weeks of temperatures reaching as low as -40 C, Saskatchewan will see a reprieve this week.

Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Terri Lang said temperatures will hover around zero. Saskatoon and Regina were forecast to reach -1 C and 1 C on Tuesday, respectively.

"I think everybody will notice the temperature when they go outside today, the air just feels different.”

Lang says the freezing temperatures were due to a polar vortex that originated in Siberia and settled over western Canada.

The warmup could create some difficulty navigating the roads.

“When the snow melts it turns into water, but then overnight when the temperatures freeze then that melted water turns to ice,” said Lang.

“It can turn to black ice, so that's a real issue. So people should just be aware of that because sometimes it looks like it's wet even if it's close to freezing and it might not necessarily be wet, it might actually be ice.”

Despite the thaw, Lang says we shouldn’t expect much runoff from melting snow.

“Because the temperatures aren't going to be really, really mild I don't think we'll lose that much,” she said. “Usually the way we lose the most when it gets this mild is when it's really windy and well above zero, and we're not expecting a lot of wind so that's that's a good thing.”

“We need the snowpack to stay as much as it can intact because that's moisture in the bank for the farmers in the spring. We need this moisture.”

The warmup isn’t expected to last very long, with colder arriving next week.

“I think it won't be as cold as we just saw, but we have a lot of winter ahead of us still.”