Prairies and northern Manitoba

Stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes, the plains of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are among the richest grain-growing regions in the world. These vast prairies have a typical continental climate: winters are cold, summers are hot and rainfall is relatively sparse. In Saskatoon, for example, the average annual precipitation is only about 350 mm (compared with about 1,000 mm in Vancouver and Montréal).

The "Chinook" is one of the most surprising climatic features of the Prairies. In winter this warm, normally dry wind occasionally descends from the Rockies, boosting temperatures by up to 15 °C in a single day.

Churchill, lying at the northern tip of Manitoba on the shore of the vast inland sea known as Hudson Bay, has an extreme northern climate. Hemmed by the Canadian Shield, a rocky region that is rich in minerals of every kind, this is Canada's Far North at its most intense (the cold and the length of winters) and at its most beautiful (icy landscapes and northern lights).

Average temperatures

City	Average maximum daytime temperatures
	January	April	July	October
Saskatoon	-12 ºC	10 ºC	25 ºC	11 ºC
Winnipeg	-13 ºC	10 ºC	26 ºC	11 ºC
Churchill	-23 ºC	-5 ºC	17 ºC	1 ºC

Celsius (°C) to Fahrenheit (°F) converter

Probability of snow and rain

City	Number of days with precipitation
	January	April	July	October
Saskatoon	Snow 33%	Rain 17% Snow 17%	Rain 33%	Rain 17% Snow 10%
Winnipeg	Snow 50%	Rain 17% Snow 17%	Rain 33%	Rain 20% Snow 7%
Churchill	Snow 33%	Snow 33%	Rain 33%	Rain 20% Snow 50%

Duration of winter

City	Snow on the ground from:
Saskatoon	November to March
Winnipeg	November to March
Churchill	October to April