Other than some extreme cold just before Christmas we've been pretty lucky weather-wise.

Senior climatologist with Environment Canada David Phillips says the good news is that winter is half over.

He says were into a magic point where there's more winter behind us than in front of us.

"My sense is that winter will come back, you'll be cursing the polar vortex again, but it may not last for three weeks, it may be three days or four days, something like that and you're already acclimatized to whatever nature can throw at you," Phillips says.

A nice fall turned cold in November when the Siberian Express came through and temperatures dropped like a stone right up until about Christmas when things got much closer to the average.

And this past weekend we got to enjoy a bit of spring-like weather with double-digit highs.

Phillips says if you're locked into a polar vortex, it really can wear you down but with the break, it tells you winter is clearly of different minds.

"When I say to people from Calgary and Okotoks and High River and that area I say 'winter's half over now your snow season begins.'" 

"You know that spring can bring that white stuff in buckets. My sense is it's just too far away to see what that's going to bring but hey I think the happy news is that if you're not a big fan of winter you've already gone through it and you're still there," he says.

Phillips says we don't have to look too far to see what can happen with atmospheric rivers on the west coast and the cold and snow in the east.