Four dead in record shattering US cold snap

  • 03/01/2018

A record-shattering Arctic freeze has gripped much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, but there are forecasts it will slowly begin to warm up.

Many school districts shut their classrooms due to the cold snap, which claimed four lives over the long New Year's weekend.

The National Weather Service issued wind chill warnings for Tuesday as dangerously low temperatures were due from eastern Montana across the Midwest into the Atlantic coast and the Northeast and down through the deep South.

School districts in Iowa, Massachusetts, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina cancelled or delayed the start of classes as bitterly cold temperatures were expected across the eastern half of the United States.

The cold was blamed for the deaths of two men in separate incidents in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A homeless man was found dead on a porch in Charleston, West Virginia, while another man was found dead outside a church in Detroit and police said he may have froze to death, local news outlets reported.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser urged residents to call the city if they saw people outside.

Many places across the United States experienced record low temperatures over the last few days. Omaha, Nebraska, posted a low of -29degC, breaking a 130-year-old record, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, shattered a record set in 1919 with a temperature of -36degC.

The cold should ease across most of the country after Tuesday, but the northeastern section of the country will see a repeat of the frigid weather on Thursday or Friday as another Arctic blast hits the area.

Private AccuWeather forecaster said the cold snap could combine with a storm brewing off the Bahamas to bring snow and high winds to much of the Eastern Seaboard as it heads north on Wednesday and Thursday.

Reuters