Kevin Wilson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 22/02) - Admit it, you walked out the door Wednesday with a little spring in your step.

After all, winter officially ended. Time to break out the shorts and T-shirts, all the better to feel warm breezes caressing bare skin, right? Wrong.

The temperature thoughtfully crept above -20 C by mid-morning Wednesday giving some hope to Yellowknifers straining under weeks of bitter temperatures.

Doubtless all of Yellowknife collectively cringed during the regional weather forecast Monday morning as CBC radio host Norbert Poitras told listeners, "Oops, the temperature just dropped two degrees in the last hour, it's now -37 C."

Environment Canada's Yvonne Bilan-Wallace feels your pain.

"You've had a terrible month up there," she says from her office in sunny Edmonton.

For most of the month, the weather's been all Arctic. Until Wednesday's -8.8 C high, the only time the mercury crept above -10 was March 3, when it hit a tropical -9 C.

"Your temperatures in March have all been below average," says Bilan-Wallace.

Most days temperatures hovered in the -20s and -30s.

"Someone forgot to pay the heating bill," laughs Bilan-Wallace.

Still, the old adage that -40 C exists to remind us how comfy -20 C really is holds true. As the mercury crept up Wednesday, one or two Yellowknifers welcomed the advent of spring by shucking their heavy parkas.

One particularly adventurous soul was even seen near Panda Mall in nothing but a T-shirt and jeans.

Not a moment too soon, either. Bilan-Wallace says some time between May 8 and May 17, all the snow should be off the ground.

With Yellowknife tilting ever closer to the sun, it's only a matter of time before we're welcoming our first mosquito bites. "The sun is getting so much more powerful, spring just can't be held back," she says.

If that doesn't make you feel better, perhaps the fact that on the first day of spring, Yellowknife was warmer than Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg.