Brutal arctic chill turns US roads into ice rinks

A vehicle drives through a barely visible intersection of Route 33 and Batavia Stafford Townline Road on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014 in Stafford, New York. Dangerously cold polar air snapped decades-old records as it spread Tuesday from the Midwest to southern and eastern parts of the US and eastern Canada, making it hazardous to venture outside and keeping many schools and businesses closed. AP PHOTO/DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE, TINA MACINTYRE-YEE

CHICAGO—A deadly chill had much of the United States and Canada in its wintry grip Tuesday, as a record-breaking cold snap brought temperatures lower than on the surface of Mars.

It was so cold in Chicago that the polar bear at the Lincoln Park zoo—who admittedly had not built up the winter fat stores of her wild cousins—was brought inside to warm up.

All of Canada and all the US states bar tropical Hawaii recorded temperatures below freezing on Tuesday, even usually sunny and temperate Florida and California.

But the most dangerous cold—cold that can cause frostbite in a minute and death in a matter of hours—hit the Midwest, dragged down as the ‘polar vortex’ brought frigid air from the Arctic.

Schools, businesses and government offices were closed. Water mains and household pipes froze. Airplanes were grounded, trains were halted and roads and sidewalks became ice rinks.

The town of Embarrass, Minnesota, recorded the lowest temperature in the United States Tuesday at a frigid -37 Celsius (-35 Fahrenheit).

Boiling water turned snow

Then there was the wind chill: a calculation that represents how much colder it feels when the blinding gusts hit you in the face.

That dipped as low as -52 Celsius in Montana and was in the -40 to -50 Celsius range in parts of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

That’s cold enough to toss a cup of boiling water into the air and watch it turn into snow before it hits the ground.

The Mars Rover has been sending back daily temperature readings from its tour of the Red Planet ranging from -25 to -31 degrees Celsius (-13 and -24 degrees Fahrenheit).

“To be fair, though, Mars is still way colder,” the Smithsonian Institute wrote in a blog post. “The Curiosity rover is driving around in a crater at, roughly, the equivalent latitude of Venezuela.”

But then again, Mars is 78 million miles farther away from the Sun.

For a more Earthly comparison, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station recorded a temperature of -23 Celsius (-9 Fahrenheit) and a wind chill factor of -35 Celsius (-31 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.

The brutal chill came as people in the Great Lakes region were still digging out from two massive snow storms which dumped more than two feet of snow.

More than 500 people spent Monday night stuck on a train that was stranded by snowdrifts on the line between Detroit and Chicago.

Train switches frozen

Commuter rail—and even Chicago’s famed elevated trains—were also knocked out of service by the snow and frigid temperatures froze switches and signals.

Nearly 2,500 flights were canceled in the United States on Tuesday and 3,400 were delayed. That brought the total of flights canceled since the latest snowstorm hit Thursday to more than 18,000.

Toronto’s Pearson Airport temporarily halted ground operations early Tuesday because of “equipment freezing” and out of concern for the safety of airport personnel, it said on its Twitter account.

Police reinforcements were called in to the airport to deal with rising tension among stranded travelers.

The governor of Illinois declared a state of emergency Monday and called up the National Guard to help rescue stranded motorists as high winds whipped up blinding snow.

Guardsmen were also deployed in Indiana and New York, a Pentagon spokesman told AFP.

Even hardy Canadians were complaining of the cold amid widespread power outages.

Temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius with a wind chill plunged the western Prairies region into a deep freeze.

The streets of Toronto, Montreal and the capital Ottawa were coated with black ice after unusually warm temperatures brought rain Monday before the mercury plunged overnight.

Meteorologists predict the cold snap will ease on Wednesday. Which for many won’t come soon enough.—Mira Oberman