In Winnipeg, with the windchill making overnight temperatures feel like – 45 degrees Celsius, it’s the kind of cold that can freeze your skin in minutes — the kind of cold that can kill.
As extreme cold weather warnings spread across parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec and Ontario, already deaths are following.
Thirty-one year old Ashley Kematch was a mother, a daycare worker from The Pas in Manitoba. This week, she left for a night out with friends, but never got home.
RCMP discovered her body on a residential street Monday. She had frozen to death.
“She had so many friends, I don’t know why she was by herself,” Flora, her grandmother, told CTV News.
Kematch’s aunt added the family still has many unanswered questions about what happened.
“Where was everybody, why didn’t anybody see her?” April Kematch said. “From what we gather, she was maybe by herself there for four or five hours.”
And as the temperatures drop, the situation becomes more and more dire for those who have nowhere to go to escape the bitter cold.
The homeless have often used Winnipeg bus shelters as a last resort to try to stay warm.
A man was found dead in one on Tuesday.
“Winnipeg has an extreme cold warning in effect at least part of the day everyday since last Wednesday,” Natalie Hasell of Environment Canada told CTV News.
And those warnings are continuing tonight, from Saskatchewan east into Northwestern Ontario and Quebec.
This, after the same region was hammered by blizzards earlier this month.
Across the affected regions, Environment Canaxjmtzywda is warning that regions could see temperatures anywhere from -38 degrees to -45 depending on location and wind chill.
The extreme cold warnings are set to last until Thursday morning at the earliest, with some regions not seeing an uptick in temperature until Friday.
Winnipeg has not seen this much snow in late February in nearly 70 years.
While Environment Canada states in its extreme cold warning for Winnipeg that “relatively warmer air moves into the province by Friday,” city residents are still going to be battling cold for much longer, experts say.
“We don’t really see a true warm-up until the end of April,” Hasell said.
Since December, Winnipeg has had 25 days of temperatures lower than -30. And while everyone is looking for a warm-up with all this snow, spring now brings the risk of major flooding.
