Environment Canada upgraded its yellow extreme cold warning to orange for some Sahtu communities on Wednesday morning.
The federal agency has a new weather alert system that uses colours to represent severity.
Red alerts, the rarest, are the top tier reserved for the most damaging weather events. Orange is the second tier behind red. Yellow is tier three for less severe weather.
“A multi-day episode of very cold wind chills continues,” Environment Canada stated at 10:30am on Wednesday in an advisory for Norman Wells, Tulita, Délı̨nę and Colville Lake.
“Hazardous wind chill values of minus 50 to -55 will continue today through to Friday night.
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“Ongoing impacts being felt within the communities will be further exacerbated by the continuation of extreme cold values near minus 50.”
Less severe yellow warnings remain in place for Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik, Fort McPherson, Tsiigehtchic and Fort Good Hope.
Community leaders in Inuvik and Norman Wells have already described the significant impact of weather that’s at the coldest end of the spectrum even by NWT standards.
Inuvik’s pool has closed for the week because of the challenges of running the facility in temperatures below -40C, while the community is also grappling with a fuel shortage that saw Inuvik Gas ask residents to conserve their fuel for the time being.
In Norman Wells, some homes are still recovering from a power outage in extreme cold weather on Saturday related to a house fire.
