(Image Credit: ID 567711 © Merrill Dyck | Dreamstime.com)

By Jacob Bamhour/CJME

Weather update

Warm spell hits Saskatchewan, but winter isn’t over: Environment Canada

Feb 6, 2026 | 10:01 AM

Saskatchewan’s winter cold has loosened its grip as temperatures climb toward the freezing mark, but experts warn that the mild stretch doesn’t mean the season is over – and the slush, fog, and freeze-thaw cycle could make conditions more dangerous, not less.

“Here are three winter weeks that didn’t happen this year,” said David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. “The cold will return. But I say the cool will return, but not the cold.”

Phillips said the province had already experienced a notable break in January, followed by another longer stretch of mild Pacific air replacing the harsher Arctic pattern many people associate with mid winter.

“It may be false spring, but it has to be delightful to people,” he said. “There were five or six days where temperatures in Battleford got up to six, and Regina up four, and Saskatoon about five.”

Phillips said the mild spell could persist into mid February.

Responsive measures

Some Sask. farmers to get winter elk hunting permits next year to protect land

1h ago

Death of an inmate

Murderer Jason McKay dies while in custody at Sask. Penitentiary

1h ago

MIDDLE EASTERN CONFLICT

Canada will 'do its part' to help IEA release of oil reserves: Hodgson

5h ago

“This one’s longer, maybe almost a week and a half, two weeks,” he said. “I don’t see it ending until perhaps Valentine’s Day.”

While Phillips acknowledged winter weather would return, he said he expected less sustained, punishing cold than Saskatchewan residents often brace for.

“One thing about when you get winter coming back, and surely it will, it could be two days, not two weeks,” he said. “We still have cold weather in this country, but we’re going to see less cold, less extreme cold.”

The warmth, Phillips added, also came with a more immediate problem: when temperatures hover near zero, conditions can shift quickly and sometimes turn ugly.

“When you get that temperature near the freezing mark, a lot of things can happen,” he said. “It’s not necessarily a good thing. You get a little bit of melting, but then you get that fog, and you can get that freezing that ice on the surfaces.”

Even with the mild air in play, Phillips stressed Saskatchewan still had plenty of winter left to deliver snow and he said the calendar backed that up.

“In February, on average, February and then March, April, May, you get about 35 to 40 per cent of your annual snowfall,” he said. “So you still got some shovelling, plowing and pushing to do.”

Phillips said the province was also at a point in the season when the sunlight itself starts to feel different, not warm like spring, but noticeable enough.

“We’re well beyond the halfway point of winter,” he said. “The days are getting longer, the angle of the sun, you can actually feel the warmth on your skin in February, not in January, but in February.”

Still, Phillips said Saskatchewan needed more moisture, especially in the southwest.

“We need some more precipitation, particularly in the southwestern part of the province,” he said. “That will certainly come, probably with the snow and the rain.”

And while rain in early February might sound out of place, Phillips said the mix of precipitation types was part of what made this pattern stand out.

“My gosh, to talk about rain on February the fifth,” he said. “We even have a warning out for freezing rain up in the northwest part of the province.”

Loucks asked Phillips if this kind of winter, bouncing between melting, freezing and blowing snow, was becoming the norm.

Phillips said Canada was “a warmer country now” and that “winters aren’t what they used to be,” but he also cautioned against assuming cold weather was disappearing completely.

“We still have to worry about the other end of the thermometer,” he said. “We still have cold weather in this country.”

For now, Phillips said the mild stretch was a break and for many, a welcome one, but he framed it as a shift in how winter behaves, not a cancellation of winter itself.

“It helps to break up the duration of the cold that we sometimes expect,” he said.