Colville Lake was under an orange warning for extreme cold on Wednesday morning as temperatures in the community briefly dropped below -50C without wind chill.
Lows of -50C are a rarity even in the NWT these days. Colville Lake registered -51C at 6am on Wednesday. The wind chill value was recorded as -62.
An orange warning is the second most severe under Environment Canada’s new colour-coded scale.
Temperatures “will moderate somewhat this afternoon,” Environment Canada stated. “However, wind chill values near minus 50 are expected to continue at times through the weekend.”
The Sahtu has already had one prolonged period of extreme cold this winter. Multiple communities in the region, as well as in the Beaufort Delta and Tłı̨chǫ, reported temperatures below -40C on Wednesday.
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“We are currently experiencing some generation issues at the Colville Lake powerhouse because of the extreme weather,” the NWT Power Corporation stated early on Wednesday.
“We have three staff onsite now working to create stability overnight. Limiting power usage in the early part of the day will help staff manage the situation with less risk of outages.”
Colville Lake is forecast to warm up into the -20s on Thursday.
