Toronto's unseasonably mild winter appeared to be taking the weekend off Friday night, as temperatures dipped and the snow started to fly.

A special weather statement was issued for Toronto and the surrounding area as an Arctic cold front approached, bringing with it harsh northerly winds and some wet snow.

But the threat of a flash freeze in parts of southern Ontario failed to materialize as there was no rapid drop in temperatures.

"The temperature didn't go much above zero, it just remained near zero and the snow just came ... and the temperature wasn't rapidly falling below zero," said Yoseph Mengesha, a forecaster with Environment Canada.

Earlier, Environment Canada had warned motorists to expect some flash freezing and dangerous driving conditions when the cold front arrived Friday evening, but that failed to materialize as the colder temperatures arrived gradually.

Still temperatures were expected to drop as low as -13 C Friday night, with a wind chill that could make it feel more like -25 C.

The City of Toronto issued an extreme cold alert on Friday, which provides extra resources to assist outreach workers in helping vulnerable citizens, including extra shelter beds and transportation to drop-in centres.

The area encompassed by the weather statement stretches from Windsor in the far southwest, north to the Bruce peninsula and then south and east to Ottawa and Cornwall.

Environment Canada says Toronto can expect a daytime high of -8 C on Saturday with an expected low of -13 C. Snow and blowing wind will greet morning risers, with four centimetres of precipitation expected to accumulate overnight.

As much as 10 centimetres of snow is possible in parts of southern Ontario.

Sunday will be a slight improvement, with a low of -11 C and a high of -3 C, before temperatures return to their above-freezing flirtation on Monday.

With files from The Canadian Press