I answered a question on yesterday's posting about Calgary winters. To get a more detailed understanding, I went to Wikipedia and found the info below. Most encouraging factoid: half of winters days here, on average, are above freezing! (Can that be true?)

Calgary's winters can be uncomfortably cold; but warm, dry Chinook winds routinely blow into the city from the Pacific Ocean during the winter months, giving Calgarians a break from the cold. These winds have been known to raise the winter temperature by up to 15 °C (27.0 °F) in just a few hours, and may last several days. The chinooks are such a common feature of Calgary's winters that only one month (January 1950) has failed to witness a thaw over more than 100 years of weather observations. More than one half of all winter days see the daily maximum rise above 0 °C (32 °F). Some winter days even approach 20 °C (68 °F) on occasion...Temperatures fall below −30 °C (−22.0 °F) on about five days per year, though extreme cold spells usually do not last very long.