Winnipeggers switching to spring as warm weather expected to roll in this week

It may have been cool to end March, but it appears April is going to start off feeling like spring.

“It looks like it’ll be somewhere between eight and 10 degrees above normal by the end of the week,” said Stephen Berg, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

ECCC’s forecast shows it will be 11 C by Thursday and then 13 C from Friday to Sunday.

Winnipeggers and businesses in the city are taking advantage of the nice weather.

Shooter’s Family Golf Centre opened its driving range Monday and already had people getting some practice swings in.

“We like to try and open the last week of March, first week of April. So I’d say we’re on par for what we normally do. Last year, we obviously had a lot of snow in the late spring, so we didn’t actually open the driving range until April 11,” said Amy Cerasani, the food services manager at Shooter’s.

If the weather cooperates as it is expected to, Cerasani said the hope is to have the entire golf course open by April 10.

“With the light snow, the course is looking really good. The guys have started back today trying to get things ready to go.”

Will Kirby was one of the people teeing off Monday, saying he was super excited to work on his game.

“A buddy of mine sent me a message saying that Shooter’s was open,” said Kirby. “At first I thought it was an April Fool’s joke. But then I went on the internet and found out it was true.”

Good Neighbour Brewing Company and Next Door Restaurant are working to have patios ready to go for people to enjoy.

“We’ve put in our application to have our brewery front patio, which last year we had just a nice little white picket fence and some lawn chairs and turf laid down there. More like a street side escape where you can just watch the world go round, while you sip on some beer,” said Morgan Wielgosz, the owner of Good Neighbour and the co-owner of Next Door.

“Also for Next Door, which is our restaurant of the brewery, we have our patio opening up again. This year (we’re) remodeling it a little bit. So we’ve started with our spring cleaning yesterday and today and anticipating to hopefully open that up in the next week or so, weather pending.”

Wielgosz said the patio was a success last year and that people were wanting to enjoy the outdoors, so they knew they had to bring it back.

“It’s another way to kind of celebrate the neighbourhood by having a kind of secondary experience aside from just the indoors.”

Even though people are preparing to soak up warmer weather, Berg is reminding people that winter can still rear its ugly head at a moment's notice.

“There’s always a possibility of additional winter weather in April,” said Berg. “It’s not unheard of to have winter storms and snowfall even into May.”

- with files from CTV's Danton Unger.