Toronto is bracing for yet another winter storm.

Environment Canada says the city is in for as much as another 10 centimetres of snow on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, which will add to the snow and ice already piled up from earlier storms.

Temperatures, however, are expected to rise, returning to normal for this time of year. Since Sunday, much of Ontario has been caught in a deep cold spell with temperatures in the low negative teens, made to feel even colder by the wind chill effect.

In Toronto the winter freeze led to an extreme cold weather alert — aimed mainly at getting the city's homeless into shelters. 

The alert brings fewer restrictions on opening and closing times at city-run shelters, more beds and increased patrols by outreach workers. The city opens an additional 80 emergency shelter spaces in an extreme cold weather alert.

But not everyone says the city's approach is the right one.

Some of the homeless say they feel safer out in the cold than they do inside the shelters.

"At the adult ones there tends to be a lot more hard drugs and thefts, and a higher crime level. A lot of people prefer to sleep outside than in shelters," said Kevin Lockie, who was panhandling at the corner of Bathurst and Queen streets on a frigid afternoon.

But the city wants people like Lockie in shelters.

Agencies that do outreach on behalf of the city have been instructed to get people into shelters, even if it means denying them soup or a warm blanket.

"We actually want people to come in off the street," said the city's manager for emergency planning Elaine Smyer.

"If we give someone a blanket, or soup, or something to make them feel OK for the moment, that could end up being very dangerous later on."

Longtime homeless advocate Beric German says the approach ignores people who don't want to use shelters and outreach workers are torn.

"They're unable to do what is sensible. If a person can't go into the shelter system then what's your response? You say then, 'I'll give you nothing then. I won't even feed you. I'll give you nothing more. It's a cold night, maybe you'll make it [into a shelter] if you suffer enough.'"

The extreme cold alert is likely to be lifted sometime on Tuesday.