Arctic freeze continues to blast huge swaths of the U.S. with sub-zero temperatures
PORTLAND, Ore. — Brutally cold temperatures and dangerous windchills stayed put across much of the U.S. on Monday, promising the coldest temperatures ever for Iowa’s presidential nominating contest, holding up travelers, and testing the mettle of NFL fans in Buffalo, N.Y., for a playoff game that was delayed a day by wind-whipped snow.
About 150 million Americans were under a windchill warning or advisory for dangerous cold and wind, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Md., as an Arctic air mass spilled south and eastward across the U.S.
Sunday morning saw temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees to minus 40 in northern and northeastern Montana. Saco, Mont., dropped to minus 51. Subzero lows reached as far south as Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and parts of Indiana, Taylor said.
About 114,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power Monday evening, the bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started Saturday. Portland General Electric warned that strong winds Monday and threat of an ice storm Tuesday could delay restoration efforts.
Classes were canceled Tuesday for students in major cities including Chicago — home to the nation’s fourth-largest public school district — Denver, Dallas and Fort Worth.
The storm was blamed for at least four weekend deaths around Portland, including two people who died of suspected hypothermia. A third victim, a man, was killed after a tree fell on his house, and a woman died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.
Three deaths of homeless people were under investigation in the Milwaukee area. They probably died of hypothermia, officials said. A 64-year-old man was found dead under a bridge Friday, a 69-year-man was pronounced dead after being found in a vehicle Saturday, and on Monday a 40-year-old man was found dead near railroad tracks, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
In Utah, where almost 4 feet of snow fell in the mountains over a 24-hour period, a snowmobiler was struck and killed Sunday night by a semitrailer about 70 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to the Utah Highway Patrol. The person killed was among four snowmobilers attempting to cross U.S. Highway 40 in the Strawberry Reservoir area.
In Wyoming, a backcountry skier was killed after triggering a 50-foot-wide avalanche. The victim was swept into a gully and through brush and trees, then remained buried for about 15 minutes before being found by a companion in the mountains south of Alpine, Wyo., on Sunday afternoon, according to the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center.
It marked the third U.S. avalanche fatality in recent days, after a Wednesday accident at a California ski resort that killed one person and injured three others, and another that killed a person Thursday in the Idaho backcountry near the Montana border.
The three-day holiday weekend and several inches of new snow are likely to draw crowds to the mountains, days after a rare avalanche at the Palisades Tahoe resort killed a skier.
Swirling snow and avalanche dangers prompted road closures Monday across parts of Utah and Colorado. East of the resort community of Vail, Colo., officials closed a 20-mile stretch of Interstate 70, the primary east-west highway through the state.
Crews on Monday continued clearing snow after a weekend avalanche briefly trapped the occupants of 10 cars and shut down the road over Berthoud Pass in central Colorado. Kaitlyn Punzalan was in a car with her husband and some friends heading home to Denver when they were caught in the slide.
“My friend was driving my car and all of a sudden he goes, ‘Ah, avalanche!’ And we just look up and see all of this snow coming down towards us,” Punzalan told KUSA-TV. She said it took them about an hour to dig out, with help from others who were on the road. No injuries were reported.
The Buffalo Bills renewed their call for shovelers at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., on Monday morning to help dig out from more than a foot and a half of snow that fell during a blustery weekend.
Crews had the turf cleared by midmorning while citizen shovelers who took them up on the offer to earn $20 an hour worked in temperatures in the teens to clear seats for fans before the 4:30 p.m. game.
Weekend storm dumps more snow on Tahoe area, travel to the area discouraged
At first glance it was a daunting task, Bob Isaacs of Buffalo acknowledged a few hours after arriving at 7:30 a.m. But he considered his work his contribution to the team.
“You got to remember you’re a Bills fan. It’s all part of the deal,” he said.
Neighboring towns saw even higher snow totals, thanks to roving Lake Erie-fed snow bands: 41 inches in Hamburg and Angola.
Presidential campaigns, meanwhile, were expecting the cold and dangerous travel conditions to hamper turnout for Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, which are the opening contest in the months-long Republican presidential primary process.
GOP politicians in Iowa slammed California and its leaders in the run-up to the first presidential nominating contest in the nation Monday.
Air travelers across the country experienced delays and cancellations. The flight tracking service FlightAware was reporting about 2,000 cancellations Monday within, into or out of the United States.
Across the Deep South, freeze warnings were issued by the National Weather Service and covered large parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In Mississippi, forecasters warned of a “long duration freeze” and said that temperatures in some locations would remain below freezing until Thursday.
Highs of 15 or 20 degrees were expected across Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern Texas and western Tennessee, the weather service’s Taylor said.
The winter storm was affecting travel across the central Appalachian region, with some areas of middle Tennessee seeing as much as 8 inches of snow. The Tennessee Legislature canceled its meetings for the week.
Power outages in Texas and other states are exposing weaknesses in an electricity system designed when seasonal shifts were more predictable.
With the potential for record low temperatures in the single digits or teens in Texas, the state’s electrical grid operator, ERCOT, was asking consumers to conserve energy. A deadly freeze in 2021 left millions of Texans without power. About 11,000 customers were without power Monday.
Light snow was expected through the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast through Monday and Tuesday, Taylor said, including 2 to 3 inches forecast for Washington — what would be the most snowfall in a day in the nation’s capital in at least two years.
Another round of cold air was expected in coming days to drop south into the Northern Plains and Midwest before reaching the Deep South by the end of the week.
AP journalists Russ Bynum, Nathan Ellgren, Philip Marcelo, Nick Perry, Julie Walker and Bobby Caina Calvan contributed to this report.
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