Hell officially freezes over as Arctic blast spreads across US, killing several
The town of Hell in Michigan officially froze over on Thursday (local time) as the US battled through a blistering blast of Arctic air that has broken records and caused at least 12 deaths.
The nearly unthinkable caused airline gas lines to freeze and electrical grids to collapse, and kept much of the northern US homebound. Power outages roiled swathes of Wisconsin and Iowa, plunging thousands into a brief, unheated darkness. The dry, frigid air froze exposed water instantly, led to spontaneous nosebleeds, and made even brief forays outdoors extremely hazardous.
More than 2,500 flights were cancelled and more than 3,500 were delayed on Thursday morning, most of them out of Chicago's airports, amid the frigid weather in the US Midwest that is affecting transit operations.
The temperature on Thursday morning at O'Hare International Airport was -29 degrees Celsius. About 1,450 flights were cancelled at O'Hare, one of the nation's busiest airports.
The so-called polar vortex spread eastward on Thursday, bringing frigid misery to the Northeast.
A forecast for warmer weather by the weekend offered little comfort to those enduring icy conditions, brutal winds and temperatures as low as minus -34 degrees Celsius.
"This morning is some of the coldest of the temperatures across the Upper Midwest, and we still have some dangerous wind chills," Andrew Orrison, a forecaster for the National Weather Service, said.
In Minnesota and Upper Michigan, temperatures will be at -29 degrees on Thursday and parts of North Dakota can expect -34 degrees, forecasters warned. Even Hell, Michigan, froze over. The community outside of Ann Arbor dropped to -26 degrees overnight and the nearby University of Michigan took the rare step of cancelling classes.
The bitter cold was caused by displacement of the polar vortex, a stream of air that normally spins around the stratosphere over the North Pole but whose current was disrupted. It pushed eastward and states including Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania experienced bitterly cold temperatures.
Some parts of the US were colder than Antarctica and Chicago locals have taken to calling their city Chiberia.
Videos this week showed boiling water freezing as it was tossed in the air in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and transit workers in Chicago setting fire to train tracks to keep them from locking up.
A good Samaritan offered to pay for hotel rooms for 70 homeless people in Chicago who were camped out in tents amid the bitter cold that blanketed Chicago.
However, the cold has caused at least 12 deaths since Saturday across the Midwest, according to officials and news media reports. Some died in weather-related traffic accidents, others from apparent exposure to the elements.
The body of University of Iowa student, Gerald Belz, 18, was found behind a hall on campus at 3am on Wednesday, with officials believing his death was weather-related.
Dozens of people were being treated in hospitals in Minnesota. Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis says it has treated 22 patients for frostbite since Friday.
"This morning is the worst of the worst in terms of the cold," Orrison said. "It'll be the coldest outbreak of Arctic air [so far this winter] for the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast."
It has been more than 20 years since a similar Arctic blast covered a swath of the Midwest and Northeast, according to the weather service.
The lowest temperature recorded on Wednesday was -40 degrees Celsius in International Falls, Minnesota, just south of Canada. The city, dubbed the "Icebox of the Nation", saw temperatures drop another few degrees early on Thursday.
But the picture was set to change. By the weekend, Chicago, which experienced near-record cold of -30 degrees on Wednesday and -29 degrees on Thursday, was expected to bask in snow-melting 4-10 degrees.
"It's going to feel quite balmy in comparison," Orrison said.
Reuters, Washington Post