The start to 2018 will go down in the books best described by one word: dry.

"It definitely wasn't very snowy in the southeast corner of the province," shared John Paul Cragg with Environment Canada. "Estevan only saw 4.2 cm for the whole month of January. On average, Estevan sees 22.2 cm of snow for the month of January so there's a big difference in terms of snowfall and precipitation in general."

"And this follows a very dry year across a lot of southern Saskatchewan, and central Saskatchewan."

"It was December of 2016 that the southeast corner received quite a bit of snow from a couple Colorado lows. Since those snowfalls in December, things have been fairly dry in the southeast corner. Those dry conditions have persisted generally in the area."

He added however, it would only take one big Colorado low to change conditions.

Cragg shared that temperatures were just a little above average.

"About a degree above average for the whole month of January. But some big swings in temperature that that average doesn't really show with temperatures starting out the month very cold and then getting down into another bit of a cold spell halfway through the month, and some really warm days as well."

"Estevan got some temperatures above five degrees or close to on a few occasions throughout the month. There were some warm spells and cold spells but all together, it's come out to a little above average." 

Looking ahead, Cragg said that February is looking at below average temperatures. 

"Cold Arctic air is funneled down in behind that low pressure system we saw a couple days ago that brought all the wind, in behind that low pressure system have been some persistent northwest wind and that have been dragging down air from the Northwest Territories into Saskatchewan. Because of the persistence of the flow, we're going to be seeing Arctic-like temperatures across most of Saskatchewan all the way until at least the sixth of February."

As for the predictions of certain rodents across Canada and the States, Cragg adds his opinion.

"I think it's a lot of fun. Here in Saskatchewan, as long as the groundhog doesn't predict 12 more weeks of winter which is really a possibility then I'm pretty happy."

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