While Cochranites are watching the mercury plummet, be thankful for the balmy -26C.

Brian Proctor, Warning Preparedness Meteorologist, with Environment Canada, says for those headed west you may need more than a toque and mitts.

"If you go west of Banff into the Yoho area of British Columbia they are seeing significant wind chills of below -40 at this point in time. That is from the cold air surging from Alberta out west through the mountain pass into British Columbia."

Proctor says we are much below normal for this time of year, normally, we would see a maximum range of temperature from -4C to -15C as opposed to our current -26C.

Hoping it will warm up soon....? It will be a bit of a wait.

"Right now if we look through our forecast right to Tuesday of next week we are still looking for a very, very slow modification and a little bit of warming as we start the beginning of next work week at this point in time. Right now we are looking at highs predicted by our global deterministic prediction system about -17 to -15 by Tuesday."

Those temperatures are predicted by one computer model solution as to what the weather is doing, but if looking at multiple sampling it looks like it will be cold all the way until the following weekend.

"We are looking for probably about eight to ten days of cold weather before things start to moderate unfortunately."

If the wind picks up any speed, it will be very problematic for people and animals if having to be outdoors.

The long range prediction, Proctor speculates, won't be as bad as we think.

"Our most recent model runs are suggesting it's not going to be as quite cold as what we were suggesting; I would say at this point in time we are probably looking at maintaining cold as we approach Christmas, then warming up around Christmas, and then dropping off in the New Year again. I wouldn't expect us to be anomaly cold for long period of times."