Gurdev Jagpal, regional superintendent for the Department of Transportation said they had a warm spell that stalled construction last week, but crews were back to work Tuesday.

"We couldn't ice spray; it was too warm," Jagpal said.

The road is open on the other side of McPherson and the Mackenzie side is open to light traffic.

"The ice crossing at Peel is constructed and open to full traffic, but the (Mackenzie crossing) is still under construction," Jagpal said.

He's hoping the Mackenzie crossing will be open to full traffic by Dec. 9.

The Tuk ice road has begun construction from the north end, but the Aklavik road construction won't begin for a while yet.

"There is still some open water in some places near Aklavik," Jagpal said.

The usual opening day for the Aklavik road is around Dec. 30 and the Tuk road around Dec. 23.

"It doesn't look like we'll be late; we should be able to catch-up."

Yvonne Bilan-Wallace, meteorologist at the Arctic Weather Centre said the warming trend will likely continue due to a variety of factors, but mainly from two causes.

"You have some warm water in the North Pacific," Bilan-Wallace said. "Early this fall, they noticed this blob of warm water in the Gulf of Alaska and that's bringing warmer temperatures across the North."

"You had a really lousy summer and then it warmed-up in the fall and that's about the time that warm water moved into the Northern Pacific, and that's when we started to see this pattern set-up," she said.

There are also indications of El Nino forming in the South Pacific, but it's still to early to tell the impacts of the phenomenon.

"This is not as strong as the one that we had back in '97 that was really warm, but they feel in the long-range, for the winter, I would say that the Western NWT, that will likely mean a warmer winter," she said.

There has been an intermittent flow pattern from the west coast and a jet stream bringing low pressure storms accompanied with warm air into the Delta that keeps pushing back the deep freeze we normally get here.

"This has brought a lot of warm air into the Delta," she said. "As the storm goes by, it gets colder and as the low comes by, you get another shot of warm air."

She said the long-range weather models indicate more warm weather for next week, but cold weather is not far off.

"It will get colder, and you will have days that are below normal, but when you add up all the numbers at the end of the season it will very likely show an above-normal winter," Bilan-Wallace said.

With the combination of warm water flowing North and warm air circulating, the result is much thinner ice.

"The activities that you normally do this time of year, may not be safe to do right now and that can be very dangerous," she warned.