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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — It has been decades since parts of the Midwest experienced a deep freeze like the one expected to arrive Sunday, with potential record-low temperatures heightening fears of frostbite and hypothermia — even in a region where bundling up is second nature.
This “polar vortex,” as one meteorologist calls it, is caused by a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air. The frigid air, piled up at the North Pole, will be pushed down to the U.S., funneling it as far south as the Gulf Coast.
Ryan Maue, of Tallahassee, Fla., a meteorologist for Weather Bell, said records will likely be broken during the short yet forceful deep freeze — a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — that will begin Sunday and extend into early next week.
“All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” he said “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.”
Before the polar plunge, Saturday marked the day Earth is the closest it gets to the sun each year. The planet orbits the sun in an oval and on average is about 93 million miles away. But every January, Earth is at perihelion, and on Saturday, it was only 91.4 million miles from the sun.
But that proximity doesn’t affect the planet’s temperatures, and the predictions are startling: 25 below zero in Fargo, N.D., minus 31 in International Falls, Minn., and 15 below in Indianapolis and Chicago. At those temperatures, exposed skin can get frostbitten in minutes and hypothermia can quickly set in as wind chills may reach 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.
The cold will sweep through parts of New England, too, where residents will have just dug out from a snowstorm. And fresh powder is expected in parts of the central Midwest and South starting Saturday night — up to a foot in the St. Louis area, 6 to 8 inches in central Illinois, 8 or more inches in western Kentucky and a half-foot to a foot in southwestern Michigan.
Snow will reduce the sun’s heating effect, so nighttime lows will plummet because of strong northwest winds that will deliver the Arctic blast, Maue said. There’s no warming effect from the Gulf to counteract the cold air, he said.
Even places accustomed to mild and warmer winters will be affected early next week, including Atlanta where Tuesday’s high is expected to hover in the mid-20s.
Sunday’s NFL playoff game in Green Bay could be among one of the coldest ever played — a frigid minus 2 degrees when the Packers and San Francisco 49ers kickoff at Lambeau Field. And ice skaters in Des Moines, Iowa, won’t be able to use an outdoor rink, as officials decided to shut it down Sunday and Monday.
States are trying to get ahead of the storm, with Minnesota calling off school Monday for the entire state — the first such closing in 17 years — as well as the Wisconsin cities of Milwaukee and Madison.
Though this cold spell will last just a few days, it likely will freeze over the Great Lakes and other bodies of water, meaning frigid temperatures probably won’t go away for the rest of the winter, Maue said. He also noted that it’s relatively uncommon to have such frigid air blanket so much of the U.S., maybe once a decade or every couple of decades.
But so far, this winter is proving to be a cold one.
“Right now for the winter, we will have had two significant shots of major Arctic air and we’re only through the first week of January. And we had a pretty cold December,” Maue said.
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CHICAGO (AP) — A whirlpool of frigid, dense air known as a "polar vortex" descended Monday into much of the U.S., pummeling parts of the country with a dangerous cold that could break decades-old records with wind chill warnings stretching from Montana to Alabama.
For a big chunk of the Midwest, the subzero temperatures were moving in behind another winter wallop: more than a foot of snow and high winds that made traveling treacherous. Officials closed schools in cities including Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee and warned residents to stay indoors and avoid the frigid cold altogether.
The forecast is extreme: 32 below zero in Fargo, N.D.; minus 21 in Madison, Wis.; and 15 below zero in Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. Wind chills — what it feels like outside when high winds are factored into the temperature — could drop into the minus 50s and 60s.
"It's just a dangerous cold," said National Weather Service meteorologist Butch Dye in Missouri.
It hasn't been this cold for almost two decades in many parts of the country. Frostbite and hypothermia can set in quickly at 15 to 30 below zero.
Lorna West, a 43-year-old student and consultant from Columbus, Ohio, said thermal underwear, lots of layers and "Eskimo coats" with zipped hoods to block the wind were the norm when she was growing up in Chicago.
"And don't go out if you don't have to," she said.
Elnur Toktombetov, a Chicago taxi driver, woke up at 2:30 a.m. Monday anticipating a busy day. By 3:25 a.m. he was on the road, armed with hot tea and donuts, and an hour into his shift, his Toyota's windows were still coated with ice on the inside.
"People are really not comfortable with this weather," Toktombetov said. "They're really happy to catch the cab. And I notice they really tip well."
It was 5 degrees at kickoff Sunday inside sold-out Lambeau Field for a playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers, one of the coldest ever played.
In the parking lot, Craig and Renee Heling of Waukesha, Wis., set up a camouflage hunting blind behind his white pickup truck and tailgated next to a propane heater. He wore four layers of clothing up top, two on his legs: "Two wool socks on — right now, I feel comfortable," he said.
"Well, my nose is about frozen. It feels like — I jumped in the lake the other day — it feels about like that," his wife said with a laugh. She was completely dry, unlike New Year's Day when she took part in a "polar plunge" into Lake Michigan.
Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard upgraded the city's travel emergency level to "red," making it illegal for anyone to drive except for emergencies or seeking shelter. The last time the city issued such a travel warning was during a blizzard in 1978.
For several Midwestern states, the bitter cold was adding to problems caused by a weekend snow storm. The National Weather Service said the snowfall at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport totaled more than 11 inches as of 6 p.m. Sunday — the most since the Feb. 2, 2011, storm that shut down the city's famed Lake Shore Drive.
Police in suburban Detroit said heavy snow was believed to have caused the roof to collapse at a two-story building that once housed a bar. No injuries are reported and police said no one was inside the building in Lake Orion, Mich., about 7 p.m. Sunday when the roof collapsed.
Missouri transportation officials said it was too cold for rock salt to be very effective, and several Illinois roadways were closed because of drifting snow.
A bus taking the Southern Illinois University men's basketball team home from a game at Illinois State got stuck in the snow Sunday night off Interstate 57, forcing the group to wait for a tow truck and make plans for a night at a hotel in nearby Tuscola, Ill.
More than 1,000 flights were canceled Sunday at airports throughout the Midwest including Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Louis.
Many cities came to a virtual standstill. In St. Louis, where more than 10 inches of snow fell, the Gateway Arch, St. Louis Art Museum and St. Louis Zoo were part of the seemingly endless list of things closed. Shopping malls and movie theaters closed, too. Even Hidden Valley Ski Resort, the region's only ski area, shut down.
School was called off Monday for the entire state of Minnesota, as well as cities and districts in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa, among others. Chicago Public School officials reversed an earlier decision to keep schools open, announcing late in the day Sunday that classes would be canceled Monday.
Government offices and courts in several states closed Monday. In Indiana, the General Assembly postponed the opening day of its 2014 session, and the state appellate courts, including the Indiana Supreme Court, said they would be closed.
More than 40,000 homes and businesses in Indiana and another 16,000 in Illinois were without power early Monday.
Ray Radlich was among the volunteers at New Life Evangelistic Center, a St. Louis homeless shelter, who braved the cold to search for the homeless and get them to shelters.
Among those Radlich and his team brought in Sunday was 55-year-old Garcia Salvaje, who has been without a home since a fire at his apartment last week. Salvaje, a veteran, had surgery three months ago for a spinal problem. The cold makes the pain from his still-healing back intense.
"I get all achy and pained all the way up my feet, to my legs, up my spine," Salvaje said.
Southern states were bracing for possible record temperatures, too, with single-digit highs expected Tuesday in Georgia and Alabama.
Temperatures plunged into the 20s early Monday in north Georgia, the frigid start of dangerously cold temperatures for the first part of the week. The Georgia Department of Transportation said its crews were prepared to respond to reports of black ice in north Georgia.
Temperatures were expected to dip into the 30s in parts of Florida on Tuesday. Though Florida Citrus Mutual spokesman Andrew Meadows said it must be at 28 degrees or lower four hours straight for fruit to freeze badly, fruits and vegetables were a concern in other parts of the South.
With two freezing nights ahead, Louisiana citrus farmers could lose any fruit they cannot pick in time.
In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, Ben Becnel Jr. estimated that Ben & Ben Becnel Inc. had about 5,000 bushels of fruit on the trees, mostly navel oranges and the sweet, thin-skinned mandarin oranges called satsumas.
"We're scrambling right now," he said.
In western Kentucky, Smithland farmer David Nickell moved extra hay to the field and his animals out of the wind. He'd also stocked up on batteries and gas and loaded up the pantry and freezer. The 2009 ice storm that paralyzed the state and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people is fresh in his mind.
"We are hoping this isn't going to be more than a few days of cold weather, but we did learn with the ice storm that you can wake up in the 19th century and you need to be able to not only survive, but be comfortable and continue with your basic day-to-day functions," Nickell said.
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Associated Press writers Julie Smyth in Columbus, Ohio; Tom Coyne in Indianapolis; Jim Salter in St. Louis; Brett Barrouquere in Louisville, Ky.; Verena Dobnik in New York City; David N. Goodman in Berkeley, Mich.; Ashley M. Heher in Chicago; and Christine Amario in Miami contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/39-polar-vortex-3 ... 48223.html
devsingh wrote:thank god we don't have crazy conditions like that, all we have to deal with is oil spills, rampant corruption, and a few hundred murders and rapes.
Boosted FC wrote:Yep. We are supposed to see 7-8 degrees here in Atlanta tonight through tomorrow. Optima is loving this arctic air....lol
No...the actual temp. We will have single digits tonight and tomorrow.redmanjp wrote:Boosted FC wrote:Yep. We are supposed to see 7-8 degrees here in Atlanta tonight through tomorrow. Optima is loving this arctic air....lol
7-8 degree drop?
KURMAman wrote:
TURBOT wrote:Wonder what the global warming theorists saying now.
Climate change
Prior to the events of January 2014, several studies on the connection between extreme weather and the polar vortex were published suggesting a link between climate change and increasingly extreme temperatures experienced by mid latitudes, e.g. central North America. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] This phenomenon can be understood to result from the rapid melting of polar sea ice, which replaces white, reflective ice with dark, absorbent open water (i.e. the albedo of this region has decreased). As a result, the region has heated up faster than other parts of the globe. With the lack of a sufficient temperature difference between Arctic and southern regions to drive jet stream winds, the jet stream may have become weaker and more variable in its course, allowing cold air usually confined to the poles to reach further into the mid latitudes.[16][17][18][19][20][21]
This jet stream instability brings warm air north as well as cold air south. The patch of unusual cold over the eastern United States was matched by anomalies of mild winter temperatures across Greenland and much of the Arctic north of Canada.[22] The same jet stream instability which is bringing bitterly cold temperatures to central and eastern North America is bringing unseasonably warm temperatures to much of Europe.[citation needed] In addition, in a serious week-long heat wave in Australia, temperatures climbed as high as 54 °C (129 °F).[23] Even in the areas affected by the deep freeze, most forecasts call for temperatures to moderate or go well above average by January 10, 2014, so that most regions experienced bitter cold for three days.[24]
The southward spread of air from the polar vortex may also be the result of a stratospheric warming event over eastern Canada (Rossby waves) that blocked the winds of the polar vortex from their normal path, driving them southward.[16] It appears that it's not just wind from the polar vortex, as would normally be expected, but the whole system that has been dislodged from its natural place.[22]
Sabriel wrote:8-)
ppl hadda keep warm somehowTriP wrote:http://huzlers.com/man-loses-his-penis-to-frostbite-after-doing-the-snow-challenge/
These freezing temperatures are no joke they have already claimed the penis of Curtis Williamz, Curtis uploaded a video onto facebook January 6th at around 12pm the video shows him in the n*de doing flips and diving inside the snow.
The snow challenge is a popular trend amongst Facebook users the point of the challenge is to dive into the snow completely nude. Family of Curtis say shortly after the video he felt a numbness and the pain only thicken he was rushed to the hospital, Doctors made the decision to cut 2 fourths of his penis.
Freshwater surfers brave sub-zero temperatures at Stoney Point
Stoney Point, Minnesota, plays host to an ice-cold surf session
January 06, 2014 by Justin Cote
While Southern California surfers suffer through an agonizing winter of flatness, a former SoCal resident recently scored some perfect waves at a location rarely associated with surfing—Minnesota. Granted there are no swaying palm trees or bikini-clad beauties lining the shore, but the waves were there, and despite temperatures plunging well below zero, a dozen or so hardcore surfers took on the freezing conditions and lived to tell about it.
Burton Hathaway, a former resident of balmy Huntington Beach, California, and his pal Will Wall made the seven-hour drive up from Racine, Wisconsin, to surf Stoney Point, Minnesota, one of the premier waves in the Great Lakes region. Now that he’s had a week to thaw out, we caught up with Burton to get the scoop on the epic freshwater swell…
What was the weather like that day?
It was sunny with just a few leftover clouds and a lot of steam coming off of Lake Superior because of the very cold temperatures.
What was the air temperature before wind chill was factored in?
It was around -12 degrees. But if you factor in the wind chill it was like 50 degrees below zero.
Water temperature?
Water temperature was between 36 and 38 degrees. Lake Superior is the deepest of the Great Lakes so it holds its heat longer into the winter. That also makes it the last lake to freeze over, which is nice because you can’t surf on a frozen lake.
Do you have to apply Vaseline to your face to prevent it from freezing?
Yes, Vaseline on the face is a must, or you will lose your face or nose to frostbite.
What kind of wetsuit do you need in those kinds of conditions?
We’re all wearing 6mm wetsuits with 7mm booties and 5mm gloves.
Do you have to ride a different surfboard in freshwater as opposed to saltwater?
Yes, to paddle into these Great Lake freshwater waves you need thicker and wider boards than you do on the ocean. You’re not as buoyant surfing out here on the lakes—the freshwater isn’t as dense as saltwater and you don’t float as well.
What’s it like after you get out of the water?
Some guys leave their cars running and heaters on full blast while they are out surfing, but Will and I just turn the heater on when we get in from the surf. We also have a portable Mr. Heater that we fire up. The tough part is changing out of your wet, thick, and cold wetsuit; you have to wait until all the ice melts off of your wetsuit—which can take up to 30 minutes—or you’ll rip your wetsuit trying to get out of it.
So you drove seven hours to surf in Minnesota. Why not just fly to California?
This is what we have for waves out here in the Midwest. It’s always an adventure and we go on surf trips all over the Great Lakes. It’s crazy. In the back of your mind you know you can die surfing in these very harsh and unforgiving conditions, but we live for surfing out here on the Great Lakes, and that is our passion.
http://www.grindtv.com/action-sports/su ... ney-point/
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