Yellowknife’s weekend weather shows a tendency towards daily highs about 10 degrees warmer than the 30-year average, even amid a polar vortex that swept regions bordering the N.W.T. – to the south. From Saskatchewan to Ontario, beginning midweek, the extreme weather has translated into orange alerts due to extended extreme cold temperatures dipping below minus 55 in some regions over the weekend.
Some regions of the N.W.T., including Yellowknife, were also part of a yellow alert for extreme cold, which ended earlier this week as southern regions of the country remain under orange alerts.
“It’s too warm!,” says Andy Simpson, who was out with grandson Trayson in the city of Yellowknife this afternoon.
Simpson, who is originally from Behchokǫ̀ but lives in Yellowknife, explained he remembers the days when January would see daytime temperatures well below the minus 40 zones, something that is rare now.
Austin Marshall, Rotary Club president, was also out and about this afternoon and agreed that “It’s not as cold.”
Marshall recalls coming to Yellowknife in January the early 1980s with his family. At that time, the temperatures would often dip into the minus 40 zone, something he said is now rare.
“It does feel like winters – there’s not that bite to them,” reflected Marshall.
“Those first few years, it was like minus 40 and we still get minus 40s but not the same number of days that I can remember from times past,” he added.
In Yellowknife, the daily average high for January is about minus -28, according to data Environment Canada collected from 1991 to 2020. The city of Yellowknife also lists an average high of minus 28 for January.
Yesterday’s high was minus 19. 4, nearly 10 degrees higher than the average daily high for January.
This year, Jan. 14 saw temperatures reach minus 5.8 and about one week later, on Jan. 20, the recorded high was minus 6.5, about 20 degrees higher than the recorded 30-year average.
While daily highs remained within the average range in early January, since Jan. 10, there was a shift in which the average daily high was 10 degrees higher or more on seven different days.
Since Jan. 1, the daily high in Yellowknife was at least 5 degrees higher than the average on 12 days out of 25, including today where the daily high is minus 18 (about 10 degrees higher than the 30-year average).
Last January saw the highest average ever recorded at -5.9 °C for Yellowknife for Jan. 24 2025 (according to almanac averages, collected by the government of Canada), while 2024 saw the city’s lowest daily high ever recorded for Jan. 24 at -37.0 °C.
In contrast to much of the country to the south, the N.W.T. saw above average temperatures this weekend. On Tuesday, Environment Canada issued yellow cold alerts for some parts of the N.W.T. and an orange cold alert for areas just south of NWT’s southern borders. The orange alert spread from Saskatchewan to Ontario and lasted into the weekend.
Last month, climate data researchers from GNWT’s department of Environment and Climate Change predicted “variable” temperatures in the coming months.
They anticipated that southern regions of the NWT will see colder than average temperatures, while northern parts of the territory will experience the opposite effect.
“Climate forecasts from [the Environment and Climate Change Centre] for January to March 2026 indicate cooler than average temperatures for southern regions of the NWT, approximately average temperatures for central NWT, and warmer than average temperatures for the northern regions.”
