People in Iqaluit may need to swap their parkas for raincoats this weekend, as the weather forecast calls for rain and temperatures on the plus side.

Environment Canada is forecasting light flurries — and even some rain — and temperatures between –2 C and 4 C until Monday.

It's unusual weather in the Nunavut capital, where temperatures are normally in the –20 C to –30 C range this time of year.

'We've seen so many changes in the weather over the years that we just take it as it comes and take it with a grain of salt.'—Gordon Rennie

But Yvonne Bilan-Wallace, a meteorologist with Environment Canada in Edmonton, told CBC News that it's not unheard of for this kind of warm spell to appear in Iqaluit.

"You have been as cold as –43 C in December, and you have been as warm as three or four degrees," she said.

"In terms of rain actually happening, once or twice in a decade you will see a trace of rainfall — not a lot of rain, but some rain falling. So it is unusual, but it shouldn't be totally unexpected."

Bilan-Wallace said the unseasonably warm weather on southern Baffin Island is being caused by warm air moving north from Newfoundland and Labrador. Temperatures are expected to dip back into the minus side next week.

And while a few warm days do not indicate an immediate warming trend, she said, meteorologists have seen some changes over time in the North.

The wacky weather has not come as a surprise to longtime Nunavummiut like Gordon Rennie, who moved to Iqaluit from Kimmirut in 1956 to manage the Hudson Bay Company in Apex.

"We've seen so many changes in the weather over the years that we just take it as it comes and take it with a grain of salt," Rennie said.