BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A polar vortex is sending temperatures down to record levels, forcing municipalities to put up more temporary shelters for the homeless, canceling schools, and causing more than 95 million people to experience gripping cold on Tuesday.
According to Andrew Orrison, a National Weather Service meteorologist, the central United States is currently experiencing some of the coldest temperatures of the whole winter season.
Following storms that battered the Eastern U.S. over the weekend, which killed at least 17 people, the bitter cold hit the country’s heartland Monday. According to Orrison, wind chills in some parts of the Midwest can reach -50 to -60 degrees.
In Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Missouri, hundreds of public school districts canceled classes or shifted to online instruction on Tuesday because to the extreme threat. Additionally, dozens of tents were erected in one building to accommodate homeless people in Kansas City.
Early Thursday and Friday are expected to see the largest batch of record-breaking cold temperatures, according to Orrison. However, Bismarck recorded minus 39 on Tuesday, beating the record of minus 37 (minus 38.3 C) set in 1910 for the same date, making North Dakota feel more like the North Pole already.
On their farm and ranch west of Mandan, North Dakota, Stephanie Hatzenbuhler’s family has been battling the cold in a number of ways, from their coal-fired furnace to starting their trucks and equipment to calving operations.
You can always learn something new and experience something fresh. Hatzenbuhler, who dubbed the frigid spell the Siberian experience, stated that it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done this, therefore you have to adjust.
According to the National Weather Service, conditions were quickly getting worse in northeast, east, and central Oklahoma, where people were coping with snow, ice, and freezing rain.
Due to the volume of cars and semi-tractor trailers stopped on the road due to ice, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that US Highway 75 between Tulsa and Okmulgee was closed in both directions.
According to an Oklahoma Highway Patrol post on X, “Our troopers are working to get salt and sand trucks to the area to treat the roads, but it is extremely slick in that area.”
Some regions east of Lake Ontario were predicted to receive at least one foot of lake-effect snow on Tuesday in upstate New York. Travel advisories were issued due to the white-out conditions caused by the blowing snow.
Snowfall in the U.S. ranged from few inches from South Dakota to Missouri to as much as 3 feet (0.91 meters) to 6.5 feet (1.98 meters) in the Snowy Range of southeast Wyoming.
