Brutally cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills stayed put across much of the U.S. on Monday, promising the coldest temperatures ever for Iowa’s presidential nominating contest, holding up travelers, and testing the mettle of NFL fans in Buffalo, New York, for a playoff game that was delayed a day by wind-whipped snow.
About 150 million Americans were under a wind chill 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 to minus-40 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 114,000 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 the threat of an ice storm Tuesday could delay restoration efforts.
Classes were cancelled Tuesday for students in major cities including Chicago, which has the nation’s fourth-largest public school district, Denver, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas.
The storm was blamed for at least four weekend deaths across Portland, including two people who died of suspected hypothermia. Another man was killed after a tree fell on his house and a woman died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.
Three deaths of homeless people were under investigation in the Milwaukee area. They likely died from hypothermia, officials said. A 64-year-old man was found dead under a bridge Friday, a 69-year-old man was pronounced dead after being found in a vehicle on Saturday and on Monday a 40-year-old man was found dead near railroad tracks, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
In Utah, where almost four feet of snow fell in the mountains over a 24-hour period, a snowmobiler was struck and killed Sunday night by a semitrailer about 70 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to the Utah Highway Patrol. The victim was attempting to cross U.S. Highway 40.
In Wyoming, a backcountry skier was killed after triggering a 50-foot-wide avalanche. The victim was swept into a gully and through brush and trees, then remained buried for about 15 minutes before being found by a companion in the mountains south of Alpine, Wyoming, on Sunday afternoon, according to the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center.
Swirling snow and avalanche dangers prompted numerous road closures across the Rocky Mountains. East of the resort community of Vail, Colorado, officials closed a 20-mile (32-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 70, the primary east-west highway through the state.
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.
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.
Neighboring towns saw even higher snow totals, with 41 inches in Hamburg and Angola.
Freeze warnings were issued by the National Weather Service across the Deep South. Mississippi forecasters warned of a “long duration freeze” that would last in some locations until Thursday.
Highs of 15 or 20 degrees were expected across Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern Texas and western Tennessee. Louisiana and Alabama also had freeze warnings.
The winter storm was affecting travel across the central Appalachian region, with areas of Tennessee seeing as much as 8 inches of snow. The Tennessee legislature canceled its meetings for the week.
The snow was expected to continue accumulating through early Tuesday with bitter cold wind chills.
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