Jack Frost is set to be nipping with a vengeance throughout the holiday season.
From a high of -7.5 Celsius on Wednesday the temperature plummeted to -19 C as of midday Thursday and the downward slide will continue, according to Environment Canada.
The service is calling for a daytime high of -23 C on Christmas day and progressing down to -26 C by next Wednesday, while overnight lows are to fall to -30 C and even colder.
The trend is expected to continue through to the new year, Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor said.
"The flow aloft is probably the best way to look at it," he said Thursday. "We've got a northwest flow over the Gulf of Alaska that's retrograding further west and that's allowing a lot of cold air that was dammed up in the Arctic - the northern Yukon, Alaska and the NWT - to just basically slump southwards across the Central Interior.
"It's even going to get as far as the south coast of B.C. as we move into the Christmas weekend."
Though well below the average for this time of year, the cold snap still has some way to go to be record setting. The record for Christmas Day was -40.6 C, set in 1971, according to records spanning 1944-2009, while the forecast is calling for a low of -34 C.
An estimated 35 centimetres of snow fell on Prince George over Tuesday and Wednesday, sending snow removal crews into a scramble. Clearing of residential streets remains out of the question until Saturday.
Combined with snow from previous events, more than 40 cm had accumulated on the ground at the Citizen office. That's still below the 62 cm recorded at the Prince George Airport on Christmas Day 1955.
Longer-term Proctor said the winter is shaping up to be "La Nina-like, if I could put it that way, which typically tends to be colder and sometimes more snowfall for the B.C. Interior, which given the fire situation we dealt with this last year, it's probably a good thing."
