With Swift Current set to get highs close to 20 in the upcoming days, Terry Lang, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, says that weather we've had this October is not uncommon for this time of year.

"If you look at the records at this time of year, you can get anywhere from the high 20s into below freezing," Lang said. "At this time of the year, the prairies are that battleground between the cold air that is starting to get built up in the north because they are now starting to get into the darkness."

Lang said that we could expect the good stretch of whether to continue.

"Well it looks like there still is a good stretch of weather coming, in the way that we do not see sort of that first snow on the horizon yet," she said. "I think we are going to see a lot of transitioning systems going through so it's going to be warm, cold, windy, cloudy, showers, so we are going to see a lot of that stuff over the next few weeks just because it is that time of year when this happens."

Lang said that looking at the long-range forecast, it's calling for an above-average winter.

"Well the long-range forecasts are always a bit of a guessing game because so many things can happen," she said. "The long-range forecasts are calling for an above-average winter so warmer than average with no discernable pattern in precipitation, not necessarily
warmer or dryer. I don't necessarily put a lot of weight into those, just because so much can change, so needless to say I think winter is coming whether we like it or not and it's going to get cold, it's going to snow, there is going to be blowing."

Lang added that we have to be prepared for when winter hits, even if it happens a little earlier than planned.