This winter is truly strange. Temperature records are being broken in many parts of the world. Just two weeks ago, an ice storm brought such hardship to Toronto that electricity was out for several days across much of this populous Canadian city, aircraft were grounded, and subway service was disrupted.
Just yesterday, at the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere summer, the temperature in central Australia reached an unprecedented 44°C. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the Northern Hemisphere winter, three days ago—Tuesday—the temperature in Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, Canada, fell to −37°C, with a wind chill1 as low as −50°C. Such cold is rarely experienced in an inhabited urban area.
To illustrate the intensity of this year's cold in central Canada, The Atlantic and Yahoo compared Winnipeg's weather—Winnipeg being the city through which the Red River flows—with the weather on the Red Planet, Mars. In an analysis published Wednesday by Scott Sutherland, Yahoo noted that instruments aboard the Curiosity rover2 had recorded daytime maximum temperatures of approximately −25°C to −31°C on the Martian surface on 1 Dey. Winnipeg's temperature on Tuesday, 10 Dey, was therefore comparable with the midday cold on Mars.
This winter's cold in the Northern Hemisphere is setting new records not only in Canada but across much of the hemisphere, including Iran. On Saturday, 6 Dey, nighttime temperatures fell to −24°C in Ardabil—18 degrees colder than the average there for this time of year—−18°C in Hamadan, −11°C in Kerman, and −5°C in Shiraz.
Forecasts for the coming week show much the same pattern continuing. From Sunday afternoon, a low-pressure system will enter the country from the west. On Monday, as the system settles over western, southwestern, and central Iran, precipitation will begin and continue through the end of the day. The probability of snow will be high throughout the affected regions except for the narrow coastal strip along the Persian Gulf, southern and southeastern Fars Province, and the southwest of the country.
After the system leaves through eastern Iran, temperatures from Tuesday through the end of the week will fall noticeably across almost the entire western half of the country, particularly along the Zagros and Alborz slopes. Freezing conditions will intensify on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and the article anticipates minimum-temperature records being broken in many locations. From Sunday, 22 Dey, conditions are expected to become somewhat warmer.
Notes
1 Wind chill, or the sensation of biting cold, is the apparent temperature perceived by the human body when exposed to wind. Wind chill is a function of air temperature and wind speed. The wind-chill temperature is always lower than the actual air temperature except at higher temperatures, where the effect becomes negligible.
2 The Curiosity rover landed on Mars around the summer of 1391 SH and, at the time of this article, was examining the planet's surface near the Martian equator.