Arctic blast puts northern United States into deep freeze

Arctic blast puts northern United States into deep freeze

NEW YORK - An arctic blast sent most of the US North-east and Midwest into a deep freeze that set record lows in several spots on Thursday (Dec 28) as forecasters warned the frigid temperatures could last through the New Year holiday.

A cold front bearing down on the Pacific North-west was expected to dump as much as 1 metre of snow from Friday morning in parts of Washington state and the northern Rocky Mountains, the National Weather Service said.

The weather is set to test the mettle of hundreds of thousands in New York's Times Square as they ring in the New Year on Sunday night.

Forecasters said the temperature is likely to dip under minus 12 deg C, well below the typical average low for the day.

In Times Square, thousands were bundled up for a chill that hit the city.

"It's really cold but I love it. My fingers feel like they're going to break but it's OK," said Ms Tashena Eason, 28, a registered nurse from Miami, Florida.

Photo: AFP

For a time, the hashtag #ItSoCold was the top trending US topic on Twitter on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Tioga, North Dakota, about 320km north of Bismarck, was one of the coldest spots in the continental United States on Thursday at minus 26 deg C early on Thursday afternoon.

For most of the region encompassing New England, northern Pennsylvania and New York, the National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories or warnings as temperatures were expected to be below -12.2 deg C in a wide area.

For upstate New York, east of Lake Ontario, the NWS warned of "dangerously" cold wind chills of minus 26.1 deg C to minus 34.4 deg C through Friday.

Photo: Reuters

Erie, a city of about 100,000 on the shores of Lake Erie in north-west Pennsylvania, was expecting a fresh round of winter storms that could bring as much as an additional 25 cm of "lake effect" snow, forecasters said. The area is already buried under more than 165.1cm from a record-breaking storm earlier this week.

At Erie's UPMC Hamot hospital - the only trauma centre in the area - employees used their own four-wheel-drive vehicles to ferry snowbound workers to the hospital to ensure it could continue to operate.

Some employees stayed overnight to avoid getting stranded, Mr Jim Donnelly, the hospital's chief nursing officer, said on Thursday.

Photo: AFP
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