The deep freeze continued in the Cariboo region overnight and into Thursday morning.
In fact, the Chilcotin was home to the coldest place in Canada.
Environment Canada Meteorologist Lisa Ervin goes over some of those chilling numbers.
“This Arctic air mass is a big one, it’s effecting not just here in BC but stretching all away across from Ontario.  We have seen plenty of low temperature records throughout the Central Interior Plateau.  In fact, Puntzi Mountain was the coldest in BC yesterday February 10th with -41.0, and then came in with the coldest temperature in Canada this morning with -44.6.”
Both Quesnel and Williams Lake saw records fall on Wednesday night.
“Quesnel set a new record.  The lowest recorded temperature was -35.3 and that beat the old record of -34.4 set back in 1905.  And for Williams Lake the coldest temperature got down to -30.2, and that beat the old record of -29.9 set in 2019.”
Ervin says Williams Lake saw another daily record low fall on Thursday morning for February 11th.
“So far the coldest temperature recorded today is -32.2 at Williams Lake.  The current standing record for February 11th was -27.8, set in 1975.”
It was -35.7 degrees at one point in Quesnel on Thursday morning but that was not a new record.
-38.3 still stands at the coldest day on record for Febraury 11th, set back in 1936.
Looking ahead, Ervin says the extreme cold warning will likely continue through Friday night, but there is some relief on the horizon.
“Over the weekend there is a change coming.  We have a series of weather systems that make landfill on the BC Coast and that is going to bring some increasing cloud cover to the Interior, which helps provide sort of a thermal blanket if you will.  So our overnight lows won’t get down to the cold temperatures that we’ve been seeing over the last several days.”
Ervin says we can expect a low of around -20 on Saturday, and -16 by Sunday.