They are calling it a “polar vortex” and it has descended from Canada like a winter beast, bringing record-breaking cold to nearly half the nation, as far south as Florida and Louisiana.
For much of the country—excluding the West Coast—these are the lowest temperatures that have been seen in almost 20 years, according to the National Weather Service, with some cities hitting as much as 30 to 50 degrees below average.
For the sake of stunning comparison, consider that Monday’s 20-something temperatures in Atlanta made it colder than it was in Anchorage, Alaska. In fact, the polar vortex was on schedule to send the weather below zero as far south as Alabama, with much of the Deep South looking at temperatures in the single digits.
In the Midwest, the afternoon “high” won’t even get up to zero today. Add the wind chill factor, and places like Duluth, Minnesota, are reporting 55 below factoring in the wind chill, while Chicago is at minus 34 and St. Louis minus 24 with wind chill.
According to the weather service, the brutal temperatures the nation will feel the next two days can be attributed to “an incredibly strong surge of bitterly cold Arctic air.”
It’s especially bad in the Northeast and Midwest, where residents are still digging out from the week’s deadly snowstorm.
“It’s just a dangerous cold,” National Weather Service meteorologist Butch Dye in Missouri said Sunday morning.
Even western Tennessee and Kentucky will see several inches of accumulation.
The weather was wreaking havoc at the nation’s airports, as at least 2,400 flights across the nation had been canceled Sunday, according to tracking website FlightAware.
At New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, flights were delayed for two hours after a plane skidded off the runway and into a snow bank at 8 a.m. Sunday. No one was injured.
In addition, Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway international airports canceled about 1,200 flights.
At temperatures of 15 to 30 below, hypothermia can come quickly and exposed skin can become frostbitten in minutes.
“If you don’t have to go outside, don’t do it,” said Michael Palmer, lead meteorologist at The Weather Channel.
“A person not properly dressed could die easily in those conditions,” National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Truett in St. Louis told The Associated Press, describing the expected wind chill in Missouri at daybreak Monday.
In Illinois, the Southern Illinois University men’s basketball team got trapped on the side of Interstate 57 late Sunday after playing Illinois State. SIU Athletic Director Mario Moccia said the team might spend the night on the bus, though players later tweeted that they were going to a nearby church.
Moccia said the blowing snow made the road virtually impossible to see, forcing the bus driver to pull off the road and get out of the way of traffic until visibility improved. But when the driver tried to get back on the road, the bus got stuck.
“They’re just hanging out, they’re watching movies,” Moccia told CNN late Sunday night. He said the bus had plenty of fuel, heat and food, and the team was waiting for a tow truck.
At least 13 people have died over the past week from weather-related conditions—11 in road accidents, including a man who was crushed as he was moving street salt with a forklift. A man in Wisconsin died of hypothermia, while an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease in New York state wandered away from her home and was found dead in the snow in a wooded area about 100 yards away.
