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Before Alex Johnson and David K. Li
Forecasters warned Tuesday night that the terrible winter blast that has already killed at least five people would worsen dramatically Wednesday. the expected conditions could be the coldest of the generation.
The National Weather Service has described the north emerging polar vortex system as "one of the coldest arctic air mass intrusions in the coldest of all time". Extremely cold and very dangerous chills would spread in much of the eastern two-thirds of the country, "probably leading to record lows and low maximum temperatures" plunging more than 20 degrees below zero in the Midwest.
Frigid Five people at least died in icy conditions:
- An 82-year-old man died Tuesday afternoon after being found suffering from hypothermia outside his home in Beijing, Illinois, said the Peoria County Coroner's Office at NBC WEEK Peoria.
- A man was found frozen in a detached garage near his home in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, apparently after shoveling snow, the county medical examiner's office said Tuesday.
- hit by a municipal snow plow at the end of his driveway Monday morning in Libertyville, Illinois, southwest of Waukegan, city officials told NBC Chicago. The snowplow driver was put on paid administrative leave while waiting for an investigation.
- A 31-year-old man was killed Monday when he lost control of his vehicle, struck a street lamp and was ejected on the I-80 ice road north of Des Moines. The state patrol said the man was driving too fast due to weather conditions.
- A 9 year old boy from Nebraska died Sunday when his vehicle lost traction on the Interstate 80 ice in Cass County and had collapsed into a ditch. Five other people were injured, the Iowa State Patrol announced.
Nearly 1,000 arrivals and departures scheduled for Wednesday were canceled as a precaution at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport. More than 320 passengers were cleaned in advance by Midway International, the other major airport in the city.
Amtrak stated that all scheduled trains bound for Chicago were also canceled.
Forecasters have said that temperatures below zero would cover large parts of the east and from the center west, where up to 75 million Americans live on Wednesday. Wednesday night, 85% of the United States and 230 million Americans will have experienced freezing temperatures, they said.
Record lows were expected over much of the Midwest: Rochester, Minnesota, is expected to reach 31 degrees below. zero overnight. Milwaukee is expected to drop to minus 28 degrees. Des Moines, Iowa, could hit minus-21.
"A cold history, an unprecedented cold, these are all adjectives that you can use to describe this," said Kathryn Prociv, meteorologist for NBC News.
"These are some of the coldest generations that a whole generation has ever felt," said Prociv. "Many of these temperatures will be the coldest since about 1994, when many of them came from born. "
The US Postal Service announced that it would suspend delivery services Wednesday in Minnesota, western Wisconsin, Iowa and western Illinois.
"You talk about frostbite and hypothermia very quickly, as in minutes, maybe a few seconds," said Brian Hurley, a weather forecaster at the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. 19659007] For rescuers, such conditions are life-threatening, but also part of the job.
When equipment gets wet, it "freezes on the ground," said Captain Greg Neumann, set on fire in Rochester. 19659007 ] "Even the cond hoses are frozen, "Neumann told NBC affiliate KTTC. "They catch the snow, so everything is three times heavier than they really are."
But in Kentucky, Governor Matt Bevin complained that people just are not tough enough. In an interview with WHAS radio in Louisville, Bevin said that he was not happy that dozens of districts are canceling their courses on Wednesday.
"Now we are canceling a cold school," Bevin told Terry Meiners, the host. "I mean, there's no ice or snow, what's going on in America, we're becoming soft, Terry, we're getting soft."
Bevin said that he was "slightly facetious" and that he really feared "that in America, on this subject and on a number of others, we were sending messages to our young people : that if life is hard, you can snuggle into the fetal position somewhere in a warm place and wait until it stops being difficult.And it's just not the reality. "
(You can listen to the full interview here.)
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