You may not believe it based on the temperature, but Saturday is the first day of March. Most of the southern and eastern regions of the province are under an extreme wind chill warning, with temperatures in Winnipeg expected to feel like -47 C.

Jeremy Penner woke up to the sound of his car refusing to start. He said he can’t remember a March like this.

"I think lots of people have had enough,” he said. “It's not really funny anymore. It's March 1st. Didn't get a chance to go away this year, but maybe next year. I won't make the same mistake next year."

Saturday morning, the mercury dipped to -37 C with a wind chill making it feel like -50 C. Despite the deep cold, this is not the coldest it has ever been on the first day of March in Winnipeg. Environment Canada is calling for a high today of -27 C, while the coldest recorded temperature was -37.8 C in 1962.

Winnipeggers may take cold comfort in the fact that they are not in the coldest place in Canada right now. According to Environment Canada, Regina beat us by two degrees at 7:00 a.m. this morning. It was -38, -51 with the wind chill.

Experts note that this year has been the third coldest winter on record in Winnipeg in more than a century.

Environment Canada says a high pressure system travelling across the Western Prairies is bringing a surge of bitterly cold Arctic air to most of central Canada.

Dan Fulton, meteorologist from Environment Canada, says the cause of this unusually bitter weather is a shift in the jet stream.

“Normally the jet stream goes from west to east; this year it’s waving quite a bit, taking a few north and south legs,” he told CTV News Channel.

“So we have been getting just a constant stream of air straight out of the Arctic for three months now, interrupted briefly here and there by little glimpses of warmth,”

Fulton notes that the seasonal norm for Winnipeg this time of year is around -5 C, meaning that current temperatures are hovering close to -20 C below normal.

Environment Canada says the cold snap is expected to persist into early next week before warmer temperatures begin to settle in by Thursday.