A dismal week of extreme cold in Calgary is coming to an end, with temperatures forcast to rise above 0 C by Sunday afternoon.
The stretch of bone-chilling temperatures — which saw a low of -32 C and a wind chill value of -43 on Wednesday — caused problems across the city, including dead car batteries, frozen pipes and broken down public transportation.
The impending warm-up is a big relief for Calgarians looking to finally enjoy outdoor activities they’ve avoided in order to escape the cold.
“Hiking and walking my dogs,” Natasha Iyer answered, when asked what she’s looking forward to the most once things warm up.
“Thawing out my house, all my windows,” Amber Allen said.
“Just playing basketball outside,” Lance Salazar said.
Local handyman and plumber Pete Archdekin, better known as Pete the Plumber, said his crews have been working around the clock fixing broken furnaces, frozen pipes and worn out hot water tanks.
He anticipates more calls as the cold snap comes to an end, and said homeowners should keep an eye out for any problems the warm-up might reveal.
“You may find things froze that you didn’t know froze,” he said.
Archdekin recommends carefully examining basements to check for any leaks. There may be lines that froze that will thaw and break due to the warm-up.
“Get down to your basement the day it warms up and the day after and look around. Look where you don’t normally look. Go into the fruit cellars, the cold cellars, look in the back corners of the furnace rooms for the lines you may not be using, but they could have froze and you didn’t even know it.”
Archdekin also recommends clearing out your home’s gutters, as it is likely ice has accumulated in the eavestroughs.