The frigid winter air has enveloped much of the U.S., affecting millions of Americans with its bone-chilling grasp from border to border.
Despite the expected thaw Wednesday, those most vulnerable in the nation’s heartland brace themselves for yet another icy blast that is set to arrive over the weekend.
Unfortunately, the cold temperatures are likely to blame for at least eight deaths so far.
Four suspected hypothermia deaths have been confirmed in Multnomah County, Oregon, since a state of emergency was declared due to winter weather last Friday, county spokeswoman Sarah Dean confirmed to FOX Weather.
Another three people in Milwaukee died from apparent hypothermia last weekend, according to FOX 6 Milwaukee.
In Grundy County, Illinois, Coroner John Callahan told FOX Weather that a 41-year-old Coal City woman died from the bitterly cold conditions. The woman was not homeless, he noted.
“Just a tragic story,” Callahan said.
It’s so cold that the National Weather Service has issued Wind Chill Advisories and Warnings from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.
“Pretty impressive to see a Hard Freeze Watch all the way to South Texas,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Britta Merwin said. “You’re talking about the border of Mexico and Texas.”
Temperatures are 25-35 degrees below average for mid-January, which is already one of the coldest months of the year for most places. With brisk winds still impacting the nation’s midsection, wind chill alerts mean the combination of cold and wind could be dangerous to anyone caught out in the elements.
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Dozens of record lows will fall through Wednesday, primarily in the Plains and the South, the FOX Forecast Center said. Even the Gulf Coast could experience temperatures well below freezing, requiring the issuance of Hard Freeze Warnings.
“These are temperatures that are so cold down South that the infrastructure’s not prepared for it,” Merwin said. “We start to see pipes freeze not only at someone’s home, but also we’re talking about at the city level that you can start having infrastructure problems, and then you’re talking about towns that are shutting down for a day just because of the cold.”
These periods of prolonged subfreezing temperatures could become problematic as some locations will not climb above freezing for several days.
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The temperature dropped to -10 degrees in Kansas City on Tuesday morning. That was the fourth day in a row the temperature reached -10 degrees or lower, making it the second-longest stretch of such cold weather in the city’s 136 years of records, the National Weather Service said. The longest streak on record was five days, from Dec. 18-22 in 1983.
On Wednesday morning, the temperature in Nashville, Tennessee, dipped to -1 degrees. According to the NWS, that tied the coldest temperature during the December 2022 cold snap and was only the second time Music City had fallen below zero since 1996.
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The FOX Forecast Center said another blast of cold air will surge south out of Canada later this week, so millions of Americans will feel temperatures dip near zero again on Thursday and Friday.
“The cold air is going to last all the way through the week,” Merwin added. “By Friday, we have 270 million Americans under some sort of weather alert for cold.”
While warmer weather is on the horizon, it could be at least a week before temperatures return to average or warmer.
According to the long-range temperature outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, next week will likely feature above-average temperatures for late January across much of the U.S.