Even with smaller school classes and cancelled flights, this week's bout of extreme cold across northern Canada has come with a silver, albeit frosted, lining for some people.

In Yellowknife, where Wednesday's daytime high peaked at -38 C, the Contwoyto ice road officially opened to truckers hauling fuel, supplies and equipment to the N.W.T.'s three diamond mines.

Ice fog greeted commuters on Wednesday afternoon in Yellowknife.
(Donna Lee/CBC)

"The weather's been very co-operative this year, even more co-operative than normal," said Eric Madsen, director of winter road operations with the joint venture running the ice road.

"We did start the road before Christmas this year. The crews … took a week off over Christmas and have been out there now all of January preparing the road. And this cold snap's really helping build ice."

Madsen said about 8,400 loads of fuel and freight are expected to travel the 600-kilometre stretch of metre-thick ice over the next two months.

This year's number of loads is down several thousand from last year, he said, because there is less fuel and fewer construction supplies being sent to the Diavik mine and the DeBeers Snap Lake project.

Wednesday's ice-road opening was three days later than last year's opening.

Air travellers received less pleasant news: Air Canada Jazz cancelled all its flights to and from Yellowknife on Wednesday, the fourth consecutive day that the airline's Yellowknife flights were nixed due to the cold. Jazz flights in and out of Whitehorse were also cancelled Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

Airline officials said that the Bombardier regional jets used on its flights to those cities are not certified to operate at or below –40 C.

Nunavummiut a hardy bunch in high winds: forecaster

Twenty Nunavut communities were under weather warnings on Wednesday, thanks to disturbances sweeping across the territory.

Meteorologists said that is due to a very high altitude pattern — a strong feed of Arctic air that's plunged down from the North Pole — in combination with low pressure areas from the south.

Some of the same weather patterns are causing high winds and intense cold in many southern Canadian cities, said Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor.

Temperatures in the –30s and –40s froze cities across the Prairies this week. In Ottawa, winds accompanied by a sharp Arctic cold front gusted up to 100 kilometres an hour on Wednesday.

Proctor noted that at least northerners tend to be better at coping with the elements.

"Where, you know, a blizzard is not a very unique thing to occur over the Kivalliq [region] or over Baffin Island, down in southern Canada it is very, very rare," he said Wednesday.

"People down there really don't tend to know how to react to these at all."

Conditions in most Nunavut communities are expected to improve Thursday.

Cold snap increases Yukon power use

Communities across the Yukon saw temperatures in the -40s C this week, pushing the limits of the territory's power utility.

Yukon Energy's Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro hydroelectricity grid, which has a capacity of 61 megawatts, recorded a usage peak of 59.1 megawatts around 9 a.m. PT Wednesday. The utility's Mayo-Dawson grid also hit its usage peak that morning.

Meanwhile, a combination of the deep freeze and nasty stomach bugs kept hundreds of Yukon children at home this week.

Elementary schools in Whitehorse reported high absentee rates Tuesday, said Dave Sloan, one of the Yukon's superintendents of schools.

"For example, Jack Hulland Elementary has about 50 kids absent [Tuesday]," Sloan said.

"Grey Mountain, which is one of our smaller schools, had 12 kids absent, 80 at Selkirk, some 44 at Elijah Smith, 52 at Takhini, and 54 at Whitehorse Elementary — so those are some fairly high numbers."

In Watson Lake, where the mercury has dipped to -50 C, Johnson Elementary school principal Denis Ryan said about 25 of his school's 135 students made it to class Tuesday. Some grades were grouped together for the day, freeing up some teachers to work on other projects, he said.

As a bonus, the lone student who showed up to Grade 3 teacher Holly Tronson's class warmed up the whole school with some baking.

"They went out and they made some bannock, [the student] and the teacher, and they put it on the cart and went around, visited all the classes and all the staff," Ryan said Tuesday.

"It was an exceptional experience for the student because she was just awed at how impressed everybody was about the bannock that she made."