A
massive blast of bitterly cold air plunged temperatures across much of the
United States on Monday to life-threatening lows not seen in nearly two
decades.Gusty winds in combination with the frigid temperatures will produce
“dangerously cold” wind chills of minus 50°C across States in the northern tier
and Midwest, the National Weather Service said, referring to the cold as
“historic and life-threatening.” Thousands of households were without power on
Monday due to a snowstorm that stretched from St. Louis in the Midwest into
Pennsylvania and New York in the northeast. Some areas received up to 25 cm of
fresh snow on top of as much as 40 cm that fell earlier.
The
extreme weather also snarled air travel, with more than 4,100 cancelled flights
and more than 11,200 delays, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com.NASA
postponed a commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station
(ISS) due to the low temperatures. The launch of Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo
spacecraft from a NASA site in Virginia was put off until at least Wednesday.Bitter
cold and snow are not an unknown in the region, particularly in Chicago,
Minneapolis and Indianapolis, but the cold arriving from Canada has a different
dimension.
“It’s
the cold that really scares us,” said Greg Ballard, Mayor of Indianapolis,
where thermometers stood at the lowest temperature in 20 years. He worried that
people could get frostbite after just a few minutes outside and may not even
know it.“You can die in 10 minutes if you’re not properly clothed,” Mr. Ballard
said.City officials put travel restrictions into affect, but softened them on
Monday morning. Mr. Ballard said he still wanted people to stay off the roads
if possible due to the dangerously low temperatures.Meteorologists were having
a difficult time believing how low the temperature was heading. In Fargo, North
Dakota, it was expected to drop to minus 51°C.Schools in the north-central
State of Minnesota were closed on Monday by order of the Governor. It was the
first time in 17 years that Minnesota, accustomed to hard winters, closed its
schools due to snow and dangerously low temperatures, reports said.
The
Governor, however, left the decision about school cancellations for Tuesday up
to individual school districts.We encourage you, as always, to be mindful about
the dangers of even brief exposure to these dangerously low temperatures as you
make your decisions,” a letter from education commissioner Brenda Cassellius to
superintendents said.Temperatures on Tuesday morning were expected to drop to
double digits below zero again, with continued windchill advisories for the
entire State until afternoon.The weather phenomenon is called a polar vortex.
It occurs when ice cold air streams southward from the Arctic Circle over
Canada and the United States. Monday was the first day of the cold snap, which
is expected to continue until the middle of the week and possibly get worse.
Meteorologists
predict the Arctic cold would move eastward over New York and other States in
the upper northeast.The irony of current weather conditions over the
continental U.S. is that Anchorage, Alaska, one of the country’s northern-most
cities, was set to be warmer than the southern city of Atlanta, where a high of
minus 3°C was expected.Overall, around 149 million people — about half the U.S.
population — were expected to be in the grip of the Arctic chill Monday and
Tuesday, meteorologists said.
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