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CHICAGO: Frozen Arctic winds brought record-low temperatures across much of the US Midwest on Wednesday, unnerving residents accustomed to brutal winters and keeping them huddled indoors as offices and schools remained closed and even mail carriers halted their rounds.
Classes were cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday in many cities, including Chicago, home of the nation’s third-largest school system, and police warned of the risk of accidents on icy highways.
In a rare move, the US Postal Service appeared to temporarily set aside its credo that “neither snow nor rain... nor gloom of night” would stop its work: it halted deliveries from parts of the Dakotas through Ohio.
Schools closed, postal service halts deliveries
Temperatures in parts of the Northern Plains and Great Lakes plunged to as low as minus 42 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 41o Celsius) in Park Rapids, Minnesota, and minus 31oF in Fargo, North Dakota, according to the National Weather Service. The frigid winds were bound for the US East Coast later on Wednesday into Thursday.
Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the service, said that some of the coldest wind chills were recorded in International Falls, Minnesota, at minus 55oF (minus 48oC). Even the South Pole in Antarctica was warmer, with an expected low of minus 24oF (minus 31oC) with wind chill.
The bitter cold was caused by a displacement of the polar vortex, a stream of air that normally spins around the stratosphere over the North Pole, but whose current was disrupted and was now pushing south.
An Illinois police department found a fictitious cause for the icy blast, posting on Facebook that its officers had arrested Elsa, the frosty character from the Disney movie Frozen, for bringing the arctic air to the Midwest.
Officials opened warming centres across the region, and in Chicago, police stations were open to anyone seeking refuge from the cold. Five city buses were also deployed to serve as mobile warming centres for homeless people.
At least five deaths relating to cold weather have been reported since Saturday in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, local media reports said.
Hundreds of flights, more than half of those scheduled, were cancelled on Wednesday out of Chicago O’Hare and Chicago Midway international airports, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.
Train service Amtrak said it would cancel all trains in and out of Chicago on Wednesday.
Most federal government offices in Washington DC opened three hours late on Wednesday due to the frigid weather.
Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2019
