Each year, Environment and Climate Change Canada's senior climatologist David Phillips releases his top ten weather stories of the year. In 2021, four took place across the Prairies and had effects on our area.

We complete this series with our fourth story: "St. Valentine's Day Cold Snap"

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Stop us if you've heard this before. Or, stop us if you've heard this recently.

The end of 2020 saw one of the warmest winters on record. In fact, some numbers show it was the warmest start to winter since the 1880s. November, December, and January all saw mild temperatures before some Siberian air made its way to the prairies for a few weeks in February.

The red indicates an area with an extreme cold warning in place. This was February of 2021."We saw, for example, in Portage la Prairie around Valentine's Day, I mean there was no warmth from a heart then. I mean, it was just the system taking over and flooding the whole North American continent right down to Texas," says senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, David Phillips. "All the talk was about Texas, but that polar vortex, that Arctic blast, was centred over the prairies."

Phillips describes the cold snap that lasted from February 6th to Valentine's Day as "mean".

"For example, in Portage Prairie, you had nine days in that early part, the two weeks of February, where the daytime high didn't get above -22," says Phillips. "You had eight days where it was below minus 30. The coldest moment was on the 13th of February, minus 35.8, and you can even embellish that more. The windchill was -45."

He notes March was more mild than usual, and even the latter half of February was fairly warm. February 20th saw a high of zero, with five of the following six days seeing temperatures above zero. (Only the 24th saw a high below zero: -4.9. Other notable temps include the 21st: 2.6, 22nd: 6.7, 23rd: 1.9, 25th: 2.7, 26th: 3.1.)

We will see if the cold snap to kick off 2022 makes the top ten stories of the year when the calendar turns over to 2023.

You can read more on this story and the other top stories of the year here.