If you charted out the temperatures for southern Saskatchewan from the past week and up over the next week and a bit, the graphic would look more like the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia than the prairies.

Alas, a chinook coming down from the mountains into the prairies is the reason for a bump in temperatures over the next few days.

Southern Saskatchewan is going from unseasonably-cold temperatures to unseasonably warm, before things get cold again on Friday and Saturday.

Terri Lang, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada Warning, said a clipper in northern Alberta means winter weather up there, but that things are different down in southern Saskatchewan.

"It does look like a low-pressure system is developing in northern Alberta today, it's actually a clipper. It doesn't really take your typical path, but it's going to give snow and some freezing rain to some northern sections of the province, but we in the south benefit from its path, because to the south of it is quite a bunch of warm air that is gushing in. The chinook is already set up across Alberta and it will make its way across southern Saskatchewan over the next couple days."

Today's high in Estevan is forecast at -3 C, before 4 C tomorrow and 2 C on Thursday.

"It looks like things will start to change on Thursday and Friday as the low itself sort of sags through and we're getting another push of arctic air," said Lang. "So we'll see the temperatures really take a dive on Friday, we'll be back in to the cold air for Saturday, but then it looks like another warm up, so we're really on this rollercoaster of warm and cold temperatures."

The 30-year average high this time of year is around 0 C with an average low around -9 C, though Lang noted that variance isn't uncommon, with record highs getting a little over the 10 C mark some days, and lows getting down into the -20s.