Katherine Rozenbert and her granddaughter Rebecca, both of Paris, are bundled up against severely cold weather as they take a walk in Battery Park City, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018, in New York, after their return from JFK airport, scheduled for Friday, was cancelled due to bad weather. A blustery winter storm Thursday followed by high winds and brutally cold temperatures caused hundreds of cancelled flights at all three area airports. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
BOSTON – The blast of arctic air that engulfed portions of the East Coast broke cold temperature records from Maine to West Virginia and stunned sea turtles in Florida – although a warm-up is coming Monday.
Hartford , where the temperature dropped to minus 9, smashed a 1912 record of 1 above. Burlington, Vt., and Portland, Maine set records, with Burlington falling to minus 20, beating a 1923 record by a degree, and Portland recording minus 11, also a degree below a 1941 record.
The National Weather Service said Worcester, Mass., which fell to minus 9, and Providence, R.I., which dropped to minus 3, also set record lows. Boston tied a low-temperature record set more than a century ago in 1896 of minus 2.
The good news is the bone-numbing air is set to push out of the region.
By Monday, Boston temperatures should return to a more seasonable low 30s. The mercury will continue to rise and Boston could see temperatures in the mid-40s by Thursday and as high as the low-50s on Friday.
Many Northeast residents endured jaw-clenching temperatures and brutal wind chills over the weekend as cleanup continued from the storm that dropped as much as 18 inches of snow in some places on Thursday.
The temperature registered minus 37 Saturday at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, one of the coldest places on the planet. The wind chill was minus 93. It tied with Armstrong, Ontario, as the second coldest spot in the world.
The chilly winter blast did not spare Florida, where rescuers rushed to save hundreds of young sea turtles stunned by the cold. State wildlife officials said they had rescued more than 100. The Gulf World Marine Institute in Panama City Beach said it had treated 200 turtles by Thursday evening.
