The first week of winter looks like it will be very cold, very mild, and about normal all within a few days (oh - and maybe a bit of snow).

Monday, the last official day of autumn, will see temperatures drop throughout the day to -22. Brisk winds with gusts up to 40 km/h at times will result in a windchill of -31 in the afternoon.

"In general across all of Southern Manitoba, we'll see cooler temperatures move in through the day today," Brad Vrolijk from Environment Canada says.

"An Arctic air mass moving in behind an Alberta Clipper system that moved through yesterday and brought those windy conditions and the snow to the region so that'll be moving in and will give us a nice cold afternoon." About 2 cm of snow is expected overnight Monday and early Tuesday.

The first day of winter, however, will bring some warmer temperatures quite quickly.

"Tomorrow even we'll see a return back towards seasonal temperatures for a few days," Vrolijk says. "Right now the normal high for Winnipeg is around -11 and the normal low is around minus -21. It's looking like we'll sit around right around those values with highs of -12 or -11 and overnight lows in the -15 to -20 range for a couple of days."

Before the weekend temperatures will even rise above seasonal daytime highs and overnight lows.

Vrolijk says that, "Temperatures warm on Thursday into the minus single digits, and we'll probably see some snow Thursday night into Friday morning." Daytime highs are expected to be around -8 and -4 respectively.

But the mild weather won't last long. Christmas Day and beyond will see a quick return to cold weather.

"A pretty decent cold front looks to move through the region on Friday, so we'll see temperatures head down and probably see lows back into the mid -20s on Friday night, leaving us with a chilly weekend with highs back down in the -15 to -20 degree range," he says.

Right now the forecasted high for Christmas Day is -21 with plenty of sunshine.