The warm weather is sticking around, at least for the work week.

Since the beginning of last week southwestern Saskatchewan has been blasted with above average temperatures and according to Environment Canada, that trend will continue until Saturday.

Terri Lang, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the warm period is being caused by two factors, but it isn't unprecedented.

"The way the jet streams is it's westerly to southwesterly flow over the mountains," she explained. "When that happens the clouds dump all the rain on the west coast, they go over top (of the mountains), come back down on the other side by Calgary warm them up substantially, but it's dry by then because all of the moisture is gone and then it just keeps going.

"It's sort of a question mark at this time as to why it's keeping sustained. We might be able to tie it to the El Niño that's now established in the south pacific, although it's not particularly strong so it's hard to tie it to that."

It supposed to reach 6 C as the daytime high three times this week (today, Tuesday, and Friday) and not until Friday night is the temperature expected to drop below -7 C.

"The weather station at the airport at Swift Current is showing snow on the ground of 5 centimetres," Lang said. "I don't know how much of that snow will stick around after all this mild weather and rain on top of it."

The extended forecast isn't looking great over the weekend and into early next week for snowfall, so it may be a green Christmas after all.