February saw Weyburn, and pretty much all of Saskatchewan, endure record-setting cold temperatures for nearly the entire month. February 8th was the coldest day of them all, as it became the coldest day ever recorded in Weyburn when the mercury dipped to -41.6°, without factoring in the windchill.

With all of the cold came the need to heat homes in the province.

SaskEnergy reported the province didn’t break any records but did tie one for the 24-hour period from 9:00 a.m. February 7th to 9:00 a.m. February 8th. Over the timespan, the province used 1.5 petajoules of natural gas. This tied a record set back in December of 2017.

Casey McLeod is the senior communications officer with SaskEnergy. She explained while the cold helped, it wasn’t the only reason why they saw as much natural gas being used as they did.

“A large driver is the customer growth that we have seen over the last years,” McLeod explained. “We’ve got more people than ever hooked up to our system, and obviously that increases the amount of gas that we use, but that cold snap in February also definitely contributed to that increase.”

Despite the increase in demand, SaskEnergy is still looking to help out customers across the province. The Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel recently approved a request from SaskEnergy to reduce the commodity rate and raise the delivery rate. This is expected to work out for the average home to see it’s bill decrease by $85 a year.

 

READ MORE: Weyburn Sees Coldest February Recorded in 66 Years