THUNDER BAY — After a bitterly cold last half of January, Thunder Bay and area residents can expect only modest relief in the first part of February.
Environment Canada's seven-day forecast shows daytime high temperatures from Monday to the weekend remaining five to nine degrees below the normal maximum of -7 C.
On most days, the low temperature overnight will also fall well into the minus 20s, and reach -30 C on Friday. The normal minimum at this time of year is -18 C,
Residents, however, will hope February brings no repetition of the extreme wind chill values experienced in the latter part of January.
Environment Canada meteorologist Peter Kimbell says that although January in Thunder Bay finished with a mean temperature just 1.1 degree lower than normal, weather last month "was skewed by the very deep cold that occurred from around the 18th of the month going right to the end of the month."
Kimbell said "if you consider the wind chill, it was very very cold" over the last two weeks.
Although Environment Canada does not keep historical records of wind chill, he said values exceeded -40 C at times in the city, and reached -50 in other parts of northwestern Ontario.
No single-day temperature records were broken in January. The coldest day was the Jan. 27, when the temperature reached-37.8 C.
The city's January snowfall total of 42 centimetres was just one centimetre more than normal.
