No, you’re not seeing a warm winter’s mirage in the forecast. A day of relief is indeed on the way.

After much of the province was blanketed in extreme cold warnings over the weekend, this week started in a similar frigid fashion.

“Very few areas were spared from the extreme cold this morning,” said Environment Canada meteorologist, Chris Stammers, on Monday as a bitterly cold airmass remained stalled over the region which, combined with winds up to 20 km/h, are produced temperatures near -40 degrees.

“Pretty good consensus amongst the various models that we’ll be very close to zero on Wednesday,” followed up Stammers. “Quite the temperature swing. It’ll be about thirty degrees from where we are Tuesday morning up to plus 1 on Wednesday.”

Don’t expect the warm weather to last, though.

Temperatures return back just below seasonal towards the end of the week with forecast highs of -14 on Thursday.