MINNEAPOLIS - The coldest, most dangerous blast of polar air in decades gripped the Midwest and pushed toward the East and South on Monday, closing schools and day-care centers, grounding flights, and forcing people to pull their hoods and scarves tight to protect exposed skin from nearly instant frostbite.
Many across the nation’s midsection stayed inside, while others dared to venture out in temperatures that plunged well below zero.
“I’m going to try to make it two blocks without turning into crying man,” said Brooks Grace, who was bundling up to do some banking and shopping in downtown Minneapolis, where temperatures reached 23 below zero, with wind chills of minus 48. “It’s not cold - it’s painful.”
Temperatures also dropped into negative territory in Milwaukee, St. Louis and Chicago, which set a record for the date at minus 16. Wind chills across the region were 40 below and colder.
The wind chill is a calculation that describes the combined effect of the wind and cold temperatures on exposed skin.
Records also fell in Oklahoma, Texas and Indiana.
Forecasters said about 187 million people could feel the effects of the “polar vortex” by the time it spread across the country Monday night and today.
A polar vortex is a deep low-pressure system that stretches to the upper levels of the atmosphere and usually circulates around the polar region. The frigid air is usually penned up in the Arctic, though it has occasionally sprung free and sent tongues of cold air south. In 1985, much of the country came under a deep freeze because of a migrating polar vortex.
Mike Musher, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md., said he expected 90 percent of the contiguous U.S. would be at or below the freezing mark Monday. Record lows were possible in the East and South, with highs in the single digits expected today in Georgia and Alabama. Subzero wind chills were forecast up and down the coast, including minus 10 in Atlanta and minus 12 in Baltimore.
“You definitely know when you are not wearing your thermal undergarments,” said Staci Kalthoff, who raises cattle with her husband on a 260-acre farm in Albany, Minn., where the temperature hovered about 24 degrees below zero and winds made it feel like minus 46. “You have to dress really, really warm and come in more often and thaw out everything.”
For a big swath of the Midwest, the subzero cold moved in behind another winter wallop: more than a foot of snow and high winds that made traveling treacherous.
Several deaths have been blamed on the snow, ice and cold since Saturday, including the death of a year-old boy who was in a car that skidded out of control and collided with a snowplow Monday in Missouri and three fatal accidents in Michigan.
It took authorities using 10-ton military vehicles known as “wreckers” until early Monday to clear all the chain-reaction accidents caused when several tractor-trailers jackknifed along snowy interstates in southern Illinois. The crash stranded about 375 vehicles, but there were no fatalities or injuries, largely because motorists either stayed with their cars or were rescued and taken to nearby warming centers if they were low on gas or didn’t have enough coats or blankets, said Jonathon Monken, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Others got stuck in the snowdrifts, including the Southern Illinois men’s basketball team, which had to spend the night sleeping in a church.
In Chicago, 14 passengers were injured Monday when a commuter train hit a “bumping post” at a downtown station, the second such accident of the day, rail officials said. It was not immediately clear whether the train slid or whether there was a mechanical or braking problem, but all trains were subsequently ordered to enter downtown stations at “walking speed” to prevent further incidents, said Michael Gillis, spokesman for the Metra commuter rail agency.
The accident happened about 8:45 a.m. as the Rock Island District line train from Joliet reached the end of the platform at the LaSalle Street station with 175 passengers aboard. Six passengers were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, and the others refused treatment, he said.
Another train hit a bumping post around 6:15 a.m. No passengers were injured in that incident, but the train and post were damaged, officials said.
“Obviously, we’re looking to see if weather played a role,” Gillis said.
In the eastern United States, temperatures in the 40s and 50s Monday helped melt piles of snow from a storm last week, raising the risk that roads would freeze over as the cold air moved in Monday night, said Bob Oravec of the Weather Prediction Center. The change was set to be dramatic: Springfield, Mass., which was 56 degrees Monday morning,faced an overnight low of 6.
New York City might break or tie daily cold records overnight, said Joey Picca, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Upton, N.Y. The temperature in Central Park is expected to fall to 6 degrees by today, which would tie the record for the day set in 1896.
But the worst weather in New York will be in the Buffalo area and in the western part of the state, where there could be as much as 3 feet of snow and wind chills of 40 degrees below zero.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday declared a state of emergency for 14 counties in western New York and announced that parts of the New York State Thruway would be closed because of the extreme weather.
More than 4,000 flights were canceled by 10:30 p.m. Monday, according to industry data tracker FlightAware. com, after a weekend of travel disruption across the U.S. Airline officials said de-icing fluid was freezing, fuel was pumping sluggishly and ramp workers were having difficulty loading and unloading luggage. JetBlue Airways stopped all scheduled flights to and from New York and Boston for 17 hours starting Monday afternoon. Southwest ground to a halt in Chicago earlier in the day, but by the evening, flights resumed in “a trickle,” a spokesman said.
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was hit the hardest, with more than 1,600 flights canceled Monday as temperatures fell to minus 12 degrees.
Parts of Interstates 65 and 84/94 in Indiana were closed Sunday night into Monday morning, according to the state police there. Amtrak curtailed service to and from Chicago, including canceling the Lake Shore Limited trains that serve Boston and New York, as well as the Empire Builder to the West Coast.
Authorities in Indiana and Kentucky - where temperatures dropped into the single digits and below, with wind chills in the minus 20s and worse - warned people not to leave their homes at all unless they needed to go someplace safer.
On Monday night, the company that operates the power grid that supplies energy for more than 61 million people in parts of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South called for the public to conserve electricity today because of the extreme cold.
PJM Interconnection operates the power grid in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The grid operator asked the public to conserve electricity today, especially from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
PJM says conservation efforts will help ensure adequate power supplies.
Utility crews worked to restore power to more than 40,000 Indiana customers affected by the weekend storm and cautioned that some people could be in the cold and dark for days.
In Indianapolis, Ronald G. Smith Sr. took shelter at a Red Cross facility after waking up the previous night with the power out and his cat, Sweet Pea, agitated in the darkness.
“The screen door blew open and woke me up, and it was cold and dark. I got dressed and I was scared, thinking, ‘What am I going to do?’ My cat knew something was wrong. He was jumping all over the place,” Smith said. “This is brutal cold. The cold is what makes this so dangerous.”
Even after Indianapolis lifted a travel ban, officials urged residents to stay home for their own safety and that of police and other emergency workers.
“It’s still slick out there,” said Marc Lotter, a spokesman for the mayor Greg Ballard. “It’s just not safe for people to be out on the streets.”
Officials in Chicago and other cities checked on the homeless and shut-ins for fear they might freeze to death on the street or in their homes.
New York City’s Homeless Services Department issued a Code Blue alert, doubling the number of people on the street reaching out to those who need shelter. The city’s Housing Authority issued a notice to residents on Monday evening asking them to stay indoors as much as possible and to check on older neighbors and those with chronic health problems and special needs.
Between a heater that barely works and his drafty windows, Jeffery Davis decided he would be better off sitting in a downtown Chicago doughnut shop for three hours Monday until it was time to go to work.
He threw on two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, “at least three jackets,” two hats, a pair of gloves, the “thickest socks you’d probably ever find” and boots, and trudged to the train stop in his South Side neighborhood that took him to within a few blocks of the library where he works.
“I never remember it ever being this cold,” said Davis, 51. “I’m flabbergasted.”
Only a few hardy souls braved the cold on the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, normally a busy pedestrian area. Many people downtown used the extensive heated Skyway system, where it is warm enough to walk around in office attire. Nearly all stores on the Skyway were open as usual.
Jersey Devil Pizza & Wings was not.
“Apologies … We are East Coast wimps. Too cold! Stay safe, see you Tuesday,” read a sign taped to the door.
Information for this article was contributed by Rick Callahan, Steve Karnowski, Don Babwin, Sara Burnett,Ashley M. Heher, Michael Tarm, Tammy Webber, Brian Bakst, John Seewer, Kelly Kissel, David Koenig, Bruce Schreiner, Brett Barrouquere and staff members of The Associated Press; by Brian K. Sullivan, Naureen S. Malik, Harry R. Weber, Jeff Wilson, Jim Polson and Chris Christoff of Bloomberg News; and Marc Santora of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/07/2014