Edmontonians weather the cold as 38 spots across the province break records

It’s a record most Albertans would prefer not to beat but 38 locations across the province did Saturday with some of the coldest temperatures in 50 years.

Edmonton was among them, posting a new record low temperature at the Edmonton International Airport of -45.9C. That beats the previous record of 39.4C in 1969.

The data, posted by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) Saturday shows the 37 other locations across the province also broke records for low temperatures with Hendrickson Creek grabbing the win for the coldest spot in Alberta at -46.1C.

Edmontonians have been battling the blast of arctic air since Thursday and it’s had all sorts of effects.

“You really don’t get a good night’s sleep because you know there’s so many people that are waiting for tomorrow that don’t have heat or don’t have water. It’s very mentally challenging and physically challenging because you’re working in the cold,” said Trevor Greenwood, service manager with Gentleman Pros Plumbing and Heating.

“It’s absolute chaos right now, we have way more calls coming in than we can handle. We generally run one to two trucks on the weekend to deal with on-call. Today we have 10 trucks out,” Greenwood added.

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Greenwood said the majority of calls they’re responding to involve no heat in the home, frozen water pipes or both.

“With this cold snap, we’re as busy as ever,” said Scott Ewanchuk with Toyota on the Trail.  “Block heaters and batteries are the biggest issues, we’re trying to help as many people as we can but we’ve been full all week.”

On Saturday afternoon, a grid alert was issued by Alberta’s Energy System Operator (AESO) who asked consumers to conserve electricity where they could. The second alert is the second in a row and was attributed to the cold weather and various other factors “including two large natural gas generator outages, and very low renewable power on the system.”

Kyrsten Kiely is doing all she can to keep her customers warm at JT’s Bar and Grill.

“Our furnace just went poof,” Kiely said.

Space heaters have been placed around the restaurant as patrons sit bundled up enjoying their food and drink.

Kiely said she can’t afford to close down completely while she waits for the repairs to be made.

“Bills are expensive. Rent is absolutely ridiculous and in order to keep ends meet we have to do something.”

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