If you are not a big fan of winter, you should like the early arrival of spring being forecast by the Senior Climatologist with Environment Canada.

David Phillips says even though February might see a return to normal conditions for southern Manitoba, our winter will probably not drag on as it did last year.

Phillips says thanks to a lot of southerly air in January, the average temperature for southern Manitoba ended up being nearly four degrees warmer than normal. That was the case, even though we lacked a January thaw. Phillips says there were a couple of days where the mercury dipped to -35 degrees overnight, but the cold snap was short-lived.

As we flip the calendar to February, Phillips says the trend of unseasonably mild weather will continue for the first few days, but will probably fizzle out. He anticipates average temperatures that are closer to normal for the shortest month of the year in southern Manitoba.

Phillips says he does not believe that the weather always balances out. In other words, Phillips says just because the first half was tame, does not mean we will pay for it with a brutal second half.

"Some people think nature will wake up and realize it hasn't punished Manitoba and so then the second half will be just terrible because everything balances out," notes Phillips. "Well, everything doesn't really balance out. Sometimes you get all the good news and other places just keep getting all the bad news."

Phillips says a repeat of last February does not appear likely for southern Manitoba. He notes temperatures last February in Steinbach were at least seven degrees below normal with 22 days of at least -20 degrees.

"The shortest month really became the longest because it was just absolutely no shedding that kind of cold," he recalls. "Unlike last year where we just went slowly through spring, I think we're going to see a rush to spring."

He notes when you have a brutal winter, the spring air must first melt the snow and ice and warm up the soil before spring can officially arrive.

"I think we can already see spring not too far away," says Phillips.