Calgary cold snap prompts warning to avoid frostbite

With the city expected to be in the deep freeze for well into next week, Calgary EMS is reminding people to take some basic cold-weather safety precautions.

Calgary was expected to reach just 14 C on Monday, or26 C with the wind chill,and then dip to 22 C overnight.

The forecast for the rest of the week calls for highs hovering around 20 C and overnights as low as 27 C.

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EMS spokesman Adam Loria says it's important for anyone working outside in this weather to dress appropriately, take period warm-up breaksand drink lots of water to help the body regulate its temperature.

"Especially with that wind chill, you need to cover up as much skin as possible," he said. "That skin and the tissue underneath can freeze within a number of minutes, and it can do some nerve damage and some tissue damage."

According to Environment Canada, the normal high for Dec. 5 in Calgary is 1 C and the normal low is 13 C.

'Winter for those who like winter'

David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said this week's temperatures will be colder than anything we saw over the past two years, and could linger for up to two weeks.

While the mild winters of 2014 and 2015 could credit U.S. air with the warmth, the Americans also get the blame for this cold snap.

"This is still American air, but it's coming from Alaska with some help from Siberian air," he said.

Phillips doesn't think this will be a particularly tough winter, despite the cooler long-term forecast. It will be a winter "for those who like winter," he said.

When it comes to snow, Phillips said it's toughto predict.

'In our models we have the four possibilities," he said. "We can say there's going to be more snow than normal, we see less snow, or we see something closer to normal. There's a fourth category, and it's true, I'm not making this up, it says we don't know. And really, it's that, there's an equal chance of all of those occurring."

Snowy, slippery streets

A winter storm dropped sixcentimetres of snow in Calgary over the weekend, leading to a lot of collisions on city roads.

Between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Sunday, there were 170 crashes in the city 19 of which involved injuries.

From 6 p.m. Sunday to 3 a.m. Monday, police said there were 23 collisions, including six that resulted in injuries.

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