Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Year : 1, Issue : 20
BUFFALO, N.Y.: Brutally cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills stayed put across much of the U.S. Monday, promising the coldest temperatures ever for Iowa’s presidential nominating contest, holding up travelers, and testing the mettle of NFL fans in Buffalo for a playoff game that was delayed a day by wind-whipped snow.
About 150 million Americans were under a windchill warning or advisory for dangerous cold and wind, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland, as an Arctic air mass spilled south and eastward across the U.S.
Sunday morning saw temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 6.7 degrees Celsius) to minus 40 F (minus 40 C) in northern and northeast Montana. Saco, Montana, dropped to minus 51 F (minus 26 C). Subzero lows reached as far south as Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and parts of Indiana, Taylor said.
About 110,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power late Monday, the bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started Saturday. Portland General Electric warned that strong winds forecast for Monday and threat of an ice storm Tuesday could delay restoration efforts.
Classes were cancelled Tuesday for students in major cities including Chicago — the nation’s fourth-largest public school district — Denver, Dallas, Fort Worth and Portland.
Crews on Monday continued clearing snow after a weekend avalanche briefly trapped the occupants of 10 cars and shut down the road over Berthoud Pass in central Colorado. Kaitlyn Punzalan was in a car with her husband and some friends heading home to Denver when they were caught in the slide.
The Buffalo Bills renewed their call for shovelers at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York, on Monday morning to dig out from more than a foot and a half of snow that fell through a blustery weekend.
Crews had the turf cleared by midmorning. Citizen shovelers working for $20 an hour worked in temperatures in the teens to clear seats for fans ahead of the 4:30 p.m. game.
At first glance it was a daunting task, Bob Isaacs of Buffalo acknowledged a few hours after arriving at 7:30 a.m. He considered his work a contribution to the team.
Neighboring towns saw even higher snow totals, with 41 inches in Hamburg and Angola.
Presidential campaigns were expecting the cold and dangerous travel conditions to hamper turnout for the Iowa caucuses, the opening contest in the monthslong Republican presidential primary. Voting was set to begin Monday night.
Transportation officials in Portland, Oregon, urged residents to avoid travel all day Tuesday as a forecast of up to half an inch of freezing rain could make roads hazardously slick with ice and weigh down trees and power lines, causing them to fall.
Crews on Monday continued clearing snow after a weekend avalanche briefly trapped the occupants of 10 cars and shut down the road over Berthoud Pass in central Colorado.
Presidential campaigns were expecting the cold and dangerous travel conditions to hamper turnout for the Iowa caucuses, the opening contest in the monthslong Republican presidential primary. Voting was set to begin Monday night.
Multnomah County, home to Portland, said it served a record number of people — 1,136 — at a record number of 12 overnight emergency weather shelters on Sunday night as low temperatures hit 17 degrees (minus 8.3 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service. The county estimated it needed 100 additional volunteers to respond to the high demand in a city that has thousands of homeless people living on its streets.
Air travelers across the country experienced delays and cancellations. The flight tracking service FlightAware reported about 2,900 cancellations Monday within, into or out of the United States.
