Warm weather prompts warnings in Winnipeg

Stay away from Winnipeg's rivers and waterways that's the warning from the police river patrol in light of an extended run of unseasonably warm weather.

Berens River residents face critical shortage of supplies without ice roads

CBC News Posted: Jan 05, 2012 11:01 AM EST | Last Updated: January 6, 2012

An aerial photo taken on Wednesday shows just how thin, or non-existent, the ice is on the Red River. This picture was taken near St. Andrews, north of Winnipeg. (Madeleine Goodwin-Ominski/CBC)

Stay away from Winnipeg's rivers and waterways that's the warning from thepolice river patrol this week.

Southern Manitoba has been under an extended run of unseasonably warm weather, with the daytime highs often cracking the freezing mark.

The temperature in Winnipeg reached a toasty high of 6.7 Cby 3 p.m. CTThursday, surpassing the previous Jan. 5 record of 4.3 set in 1984.

Records were also broken insouthwest Manitoba, where Melita and Morris both hit 11 C. Manitobans don't usually see those kinds of numbers until April.

Weird weather

Daytime high temperatures have been about 10 to 15 degrees warmer than normal in recent days, and the mercury hasn't dipped muchonce the sun goes down.Overnight lows have been about 20 degrees warmer.

Normal temperatures for this time of year:

High: 13 C
Low: 23 C

Ray Duma, Winnipeg's river patrol officer,saidthere is more open water in January than he's ever seen in 20 years.

And where there is still ice, it's only eightto 10 inches thick. It should be twice that at this time of year, Duma said.

Crews testing the ice even get nervous walking out on it, even though they're well equipped.

"Well, the ice always cracks because it'sreadjusting itself. So when that happens we still, you know, we still have a little bit of a shudder there, but we are always out there with safety equipmentwe're harnessed up and we've got ropes so we're OK," Duma said.

The general public isn't safe anywhere near the ice right now and should avoid it, he said.

Even where they were once welcome, the public is being asked to stay away.

The Assiniboine Park duck pond, which opened six days ago to skating, is closed again due to the "significant melt" expected today as temperatures soar,the Assiniboine Park Conservancy stated in a news release.

Health emergency

The warm weather has created a health emergency for Berens River First Nation.

With winter roads still impassable, thecommunity on the east side of Lake Winnipeg has not been able to bring in necessary supplies and has run out of gasoline.

Chief George Kemp saidhealth workers can no longerreach patients who need regular home care.

"Take Winnipeg and take all the gas away and see what happens," he said."Your ambulance can't run or nothing."

As many as 30 residents may be forced to leavethe reserve but Health Canada mustfirst approve the evacuation andKemp expects to hear from them soon.

Temperature records broken

A number of Manitoba communities broke warm weather records on Thursday. Here are some of the record-setting temperatures as of 3 p.m. CT, according to Environment Canada.

Environment Canada noted that the warmest temperature ever recorded in Winnipeg in January was 7.8 C on Jan. 23, 1942.

	Max. temperature (C)	Previous record (Year set)
Winnipeg	6.7	4.3 (1984)
Portage la Prairie	9.7	5.0 (1984)
Gretna	11.0	5.0 (1958)
Pilot Mound	10.2	4.4 (1958)
Brandon	6.9	4.5 (1984)
Melita	11.4	4.1 (2001)
Dauphin	8.5	5.0 (1984)
Fisher Branch	4.3	3.0 (1984)
Gimli	5.2	4.3 (1984)
Pinawa	5.3	3.0 (1984)
Sprague	8.1	4.0 (1984)

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