WINNIPEG — Winter is only two weeks old, but for most people in the Prairies, it already feels like a very long bone-chilling, balaclava-wearing, test of endurance.

Wind chills continued to register near or below -30 C in many areas Monday — an almost daily occurrence since mid-December.

It has been so consistently cold, the average daily temperature for December in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg registered between four and six degrees below normal, Environment Canada said.

“It’s this huge Arctic air mass that goes way over the North Pole as well,” said meteorologist Dave Carlsen.

“It’s a really big dome of Siberian cold air and it’s just not moving.”

The harsh weather has even convinced many winter enthusiasts to stay indoors. Peter Clark, with the La Ronge Snowmobile Club in northern Saskatchewan, says he’s only racked up 80 kilometres on his snow machine this year — about one-tenth his normal amount.

“It’s too cold to go,” he said in a phone interview from La Ronge.

In Winnipeg, many of the city’s electronic parking meters were too frozen to accept money.

For the city’s homeless, the bitter cold has made a hard life even harder. Ron, a 32-year-old transient who did not want his last name used, was among dozens of people who crammed midday into the drop-in centre at the Main Street Project in Winnipeg, which offers soup, snacks and a warm bed for the night.

“I’ve been keeping warm outside by drinking alcohol or doing some kind of drug,” he said.

Ron has managed to find a bed at Main Street or one of the city’s other shelters since the cold snap started. But he knows others who are not so lucky.

“I have a friend that is sleeping inside a garbage (dumpster). He went inside and put cardboard boxes and jumped inside with his blanket and fell asleep inside there. He covered up ... but he was chilled to the bone and he felt like he had arthritis.”

Norman, another 33-year-old staying at Main Street, said some of his friends sleep in bus shelters, which offer a bit of protection from the wind.

Main Street workers cruise the streets at night in a van, looking for people too intoxicated to make their way to a shelter. Main Street and the nearby Siloam Mission have opened more beds in the last two years, and there does not appear to be a shortage of space. Still, tragedies occur every year.

“There are people out there today that I know have no legs because they fell asleep in the cold,” said Brian Bechtel, Main Street’s executive director.

For most people, life continued as normal in the cold snap. Only a handful of schools shut down in rural Manitoba, and most flights at the Winnipeg airport were on schedule.

Further west, Regina warmed up temporarily to a relatively balmy -16 C, while Calgary got above the freezing mark.