Toronto could soon be under a deep freeze as a system threatens to bring temperatures colder than -30 C to southern Ontario.

The forecast for early February comes as Toronto braces for what is promising to be a historic snowstorm, and extremely frigid temperatures forecast for the following week could complicate cleanup efforts.

Ingersoll, Ontario-based extreme weather chaser, David Piano, shared a graphic forecasting bitter cold to descend over the region by Feb. 2 with temperatures as low as the mid-negative-30s in both Fahrenheit and Celsius (the two metrics reach equilibrium in this extreme range).

GFS advertising record cold temps on the morning of Groundhog Day, perhaps dropping below -30C for a large chunk of S ON and perhaps below -40C for cottage country and north. The groundhogs may just throw in the towel and not even emerge this year... #ONwx #GroundhogDay pic.twitter.com/22zGPwLyyK

— David Piano (@ONwxchaser) January 24, 2023

Readings from the U.S. Global Forecast System (GFS) indicate that it could be even colder in areas north of the Toronto region, including Ontario's cottage country. Measurements on the graphic drop as low as -42 F for parts of cottage country, equal to just under -41 C.

Just for reference, the latest temperature readings from the Curiosity Rover measured on Mars' Gale Crater saw a Jan. 18 high of -9 C and a low of -75 C.

So yea, there could be points during this cold system where Toronto and the surrounding region will indeed be colder than the surface of Mars.

As terrifying as this prediction is, different meteorologists are saying different things about this coming Groundhog Day, and some don't think the coming cold weather will be as bad as this one forecast suggests.

The Weather Network is only predicting a low of -15 C for Feb. 2, while Accuweather's forecast only calls for a low of -10 C, a discrepancy that has to do with the GFS model's tendency to run colder than official forecasts.

This was the case in early 2019 when a similar arctic blast descended over Lake Michigan, and GFS-model predictions called for significantly lower air temperatures than predictions using the standard ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) model.

Regardless of which weather model you listen to, it's going to be a freezing Groundhog Day with temperatures low enough to cause frostbite to exposed skin and likely cold weather alerts across Ontario.