The southeast will see some spring warmth come to the area following a chilly start to the season.

A spate of cold air has been hanging over the southeast since around the start of March, occasionally plunging the area back into winter-like temperatures.

Now the weather is shifting, with Environment Canada Meteorologist Terri Lang discussing what's shifting in the atmosphere.

"You have that ridge of high pressure that was kind of anchored over Saskatchewan finally moving off and that's allowing some milder air to finally start to move in. But the side effect of that milder air moving in and the Ridge moving out is that it's also allowing weather systems to pass through.

That will be a small weather system overnight Thursday into Friday, bringing a bit of cold air and potentially some snow.

The small drop in temperature will be followed up by another rise according to Lang.

"The temperatures are going up ahead of the system. That usually means in behind the system that the temperatures will kind of sink again once behind, with the temperatures bottoming out towards the mid-minus teens again. So well below average for this time of year, but then after that we should see a little bit of rebound in temperatures again."

The warmth may not last through the rest of the spring as Lang says the period is normally somewhat volatile.

"I think in particular that Tuesday temperatures are probably a little bit optimistic. We do have problems in the spring and the fall, particularly with the long-range temperatures often being forecast too high just because the model doesn't see the snow cover as well sometimes. So you'll probably see over the next few days. That will probably kind of be bumped down a little bit. As the end of the period starts to get closer, you'll start to see the temperatures for that period start to go down a little bit."