Extreme Cold Weather Hits Midwest

And the worst of the blast was still to come: Forecasters said temperatures would drop again after sunset Wednesday, and that Chicago might even break its record low of 27 degrees below zero. The outlook for Thursday was different but still grim: slightly warmer temperatures — and snow.

Here are the latest developments:

— Temperatures plummeted and could break records. Minneapolis dipped as low as 28 degrees below zero, with the wind chill reaching 53 degrees below zero, the National Weather Service said. Chicago got to 23 degrees below zero, with a windchill of 50 degrees below zero. And Milwaukee hit 20 degrees below zero, with a wind chill of 47 degrees below zero.

— As many as seven deaths have been reported to be connected to the Midwest’s dangerously cold weather system, according to The Associated Press, including a man hit by a snow plow in the Chicago region, a man believed to have frozen to death in a Milwaukee garage, and a couple killed in a vehicle accident on an Indiana road.

— Officials throughout the region have declared states of emergency, warned of frostbite and hypothermia, and urged residents to heed guidelines that ultimately boiled down to two words: Stay inside.

— More than 2,000 flights were canceled across the United States, according to FlightAware, most of which were heading into or out of the frozen Midwest.

— Bone-freezing cold and Arctic gusts up to 40 mph were blasting New York City on Wednesday evening.

Hospitals have treated dozens of frostbite patients.

Although officials warned people, especially the homeless, to seek shelter and opened warming centers, hospitals across the region said they had collectively received dozens of patients suffering from exposure and frostbite.

But the extreme cold seemed to have acted as a sort of preventive measure, doctors said, because emergency workers were on higher alert and prospective patients were less willing to test their tolerance for the cold.

“Sometimes it is TOO cold for hypothermia because patients really do heed the cold (and are looked for) and take shelter,” Dr. Padraic Sweeny, who practices emergency medicine in Detroit, said in an email.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago had treated more than a dozen patients, including one who faced the possibility of an amputation, said Dr. George T. Chiampas, an emergency medicine doctor. He said the patients’ conditions had been exacerbated by days of cold weather, not just Wednesday’s surge of arctic air.

“Their ability to get dry socks or dry shoes set them up, unfortunately, with the blast of cold air to have some issues,” he said.

At Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Dr. Douglas D. Brunette said doctors had admitted 11 patients for frostbite and treated a similar number on an outpatient basis. Many of the affected patients were homeless or struggled with substance abuse, he said.

“It’s busier than it would normally be,” he said. “But it’s not a mass-casualty incident yet.”

Stores are closed, and the streets are empty.

All around Chicago, restaurants and shops seemed to have one thing in common: a hastily placed sign in the door announcing that they were closed for the day.

There would be no chance of a scoop of stracciatella at Frio Gelato on Clark Street (not that anyone would want it), or Wiener schnitzel at the Berghoff Cafe downtown. The Lincoln Park Zoo and the Brookfield Zoo also announced they were closed, though Lincoln Park’s polar bears were still allowed to venture outside.

Commerce slowed throughout the Midwest but the frigid conditions were unlikely to exact a lingering economic toll. In a 2015 report, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago concluded that winter weather had “a significant, but short-lived effect on economic activity.”

But economists, the report suggested, have long struggled to pinpoint the financial consequences of events like this week’s polar vortex, especially because regional and national economies are shaped by so many factors.

Still, plenty of businesses were not running as usual Wednesday, suggesting that locally felt consequences might not surface in long-range data. Even “Disney on Ice,” which was scheduled to run on Wednesday night at Chicago’s United Center, was canceled. So, too, was “Hamilton.”

Through it all, some restaurants pressed on.

At Huck Finn, a diner on the Southwest Side, there were fewer patrons than usual, said Demetri Hiotis, general manager. But the people who did come in were cheerful, almost exuberant.

“It’s like they’re living through some kind of weather history — everyone else stayed in, and we’re here doing our thing,” Hiotis said. “There’s a sense of pride. It’s 22 below, but I still went to work, got my breakfast, got my coffee and doughnut.”

In Minnesota, Michael Madigan, president of Minnesota Beer Wholesalers Association, said most distributors had canceled deliveries Wednesday. “I can’t remember a time when beer deliveries across the state were suspended,” he said.

It was so cold that even if the beer were to be delivered, it would arrive frozen, he said, except in the rare instance in which a distributor used a heated truck.

Schools and colleges close, but this was no ordinary snow day.

Schools across a broad section of the nation canceled classes as the dangerous freeze descended, and some said they were pondering canceling classes again Thursday. Many Midwestern institutions lean toward staying open through snowstorms and cold spells, but this one was different. For a second consecutive day, students Wednesday were told to stay home at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, where there was a forecast high of 3 degrees below zero, relatively warm compared with other parts of the Midwest.

The roughly 44,000 students at the University of Wisconsin had Wednesday off, as temperatures at the Madison campus were expected to dip to 30 degrees below zero by evening. University officials had come under criticism for keeping the campus open Monday and Tuesday in subzero weather.

Hundreds of thousands of younger students in schools across the country’s midsection also had no classes Wednesday. Administrators in school districts in and around Cincinnati, worried about students walking to school in the cold or the possibility of a bus breaking down in the cold, called off class.

Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky apparently disagreed with the decision by many schools and colleges in that state to shut down Wednesday. “We’re getting soft,” Bevin, a Republican, said during a radio interview Tuesday. The forecast high in Louisville on Wednesday was 9 degrees, with a wind chill as low as 15 degrees below zero.

A day home from school had some students rejoicing, but many may have to make it up later. A banner across the website of the Park Hill School District in suburban Kansas City, Missouri, told students to stay home but offered an added note: The school year will be extended by a day.

Sea smoke rises from a frigid Lake Michigan.

The temperature at Montrose Harbor on Chicago’s North Side on Wednesday was 21 degrees below zero, with a fierce wind gusting from the west. That did not deter Iggy Ignoffo, who stood at the edge of Lake Michigan, wearing sunglasses and a warm cap, hands stuffed in his pockets.

“I could see Venus, Jupiter and the moon a little while ago,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Beautiful.” Sea smoke rose from the lake, the result of extremely cold air blowing over warmer water. The downtown skyline was visible in the distance, several miles away.

The harbor was hardly deserted: a stream of curious people ducked in and out of their cars, snapping pictures, taking a brief frolic in the snow.

Ignoffo and his wife come down the harbor all the time, he said, one of the most photogenic spots in the city. This time, she stayed in the car.

“Now I’m going to take a swim,” Ignoffo said, beginning the walk back to his car. “Indoors.”

Planes are fine, but there were still plenty of cancellations.

Despite the extreme cold, aircraft icing was not a major concern Wednesday, because there wasn’t enough precipitation for ice to build up. And planes have no trouble flying in such extreme temperatures (it can be as cold as 70 degrees below zero at flight level), but ground equipment is more susceptible to the cold — not to mention the ground crew.

United Airlines canceled about 500 flights into and out of Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday through Thursday morning, with most of the affected flights involving other Midwestern airports. American Airlines canceled about 675, including 270 at its Chicago hub.

Delta Air Lines, which has hubs in Minneapolis and Detroit, had canceled around 40 flights. Some of those cancellations were caused by refueling lines freezing up, said Michael Thomas, a spokesman for Delta.

The airlines were also taking measures to keep their ground crews safe. United set up temporary heating shelters at a number of airports around the region and brought in extra ramp workers to rotate shifts so employees could minimize their time outside. Delta also said it brought in more workers, was providing hand warmers and was scheduling extra hydration breaks to keep workers out of the elements as much as possible.

Many trains and buses keep running, some with the help of fire.

The Chicago Transit Authority said its “L” trains were operating, but that some lines — including those connecting Midway and O’Hare airports with downtown — were running on modified schedules or with delays. Some bus lines were rerouted.

But Metra, a commuter railroad in the Chicago region that had already announced modified schedules, said it had suspended electric train service indefinitely because of wire problems “caused by harsh subfreezing temperatures.”

Even trains that were operating Wednesday were being aided by an unusual — and typically unwelcome — sight: fire.

To keep its diesel-powered lines moving, Metra uses fire generated by gas-fed heaters to prevent switches from freezing and becoming inoperable, Tom Miller, an agency spokesman, said.

“Despite popular belief, the tracks themselves are not on fire,” Metra explained on its website. “Instead, the flames come from a gas-fed system that runs adjacent to the rail, generating heat on the critical areas where the switches are supposed to make contact.”

The solution isn’t unique to this burst of cold; instead, it’s been a go-to fix for Chicago for years, Miller said.

Beyond Chicago, transit agencies in Detroit, Milwaukee and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were trying to operate normally but some warned customers of the potential for delays.

“Riders should dress appropriately (multiple layers), stay indoors for as long as possible and be aware that they may have to wait longer than usual,” the Milwaukee County Transit System said.

Amtrak, which ordinarily runs 55 trains to or from Chicago each day, said it had canceled all of its Wednesday services involving the city and that most Thursday trains would also be scratched. Given Chicago’s prominence in the Amtrak network, the decision was expected to be felt across the country.

‘Frost quakes’ are rattling the ground and people nearby.

Residents in central Pennsylvania said it sounded like crashing furniture. In Toledo, Ohio, the noise resembled an explosion, shaking homes in the middle of the night. A homeowner in Illinois thought a bird had flown into his house.

Those noises reported in recent days, though, were likely the result of a weather phenomenon known as a “frost quake.” During a sudden deep freeze, water in the soil can turn to ice and rapidly expand, causing sudden cracks in the ground and a loud boom.

For quakes to occur, the ground must be saturated before the freeze and cannot be covered in snow or ice, which would insulate the soil, according to the scientists who study them. They usually strike during the coldest part of the night.

They are more common in parts of Canada than the United States but have been reported in New England and the Midwest. Unlike earthquakes, frost quakes release very little energy and are often unnoticed by anyone beyond a few hundred yards from the location, according to the Maine Geological Survey.

Parts of Canada are also shivering through the polar vortex.

Even for Canadian cities where cold weather is not a stranger, temperatures have been unusually low. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, temperatures bottomed out at minus 39.3 Fahrenheit (or minus 39.6 Celsius) early Wednesday morning. The windchill was minus 59.8 Fahrenheit, according to Canada’s weather service.

Several areas, including Ottawa, Ontario, and Montreal, have also been hit with significant snowfalls despite the cold, which normally is associated with clear skies.

And Monday, Kapuskasing, Ontario, a town where General Motors conducts cold-weather testing of cars, had a low of minus 40.2 Fahrenheit (minus 40.1 Celsius), breaking a 99-year-old record.

If it’s so cold out, what about global warming?

The extremely low temperatures this week in parts of the United States, stand in sharp contrast to the trend toward warmer winters. But they may also be a result of warming.

Emerging research suggests that a warming Arctic is causing changes in the jet stream and pushing polar air down to latitudes that are unaccustomed to them and often unprepared. Hence this week’s atypical chill over large swaths of the Northeast and Midwest.

Friederike Otto, an Oxford University climate scientist who studies how specific weather events are exacerbated by global warming, said that while not all of these extreme events can be attributed to climate change, the profound changes in the earth’s atmosphere raise “the likelihood of a large number of extreme events.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.