Wintry apocalypse takes a heavy toll
EXTREME cold weather blamed on a system known as the polar vortex has caused deadly blizzards across the US Midwest and left major cities looking like scenes from a disaster movie.
But images showing Lake Michigan turned into a huge ice floe was no The Day After
Tomorrow- style disaster film – it was the waterfront in Chicago. A split in the polar vortex has forced the mass of freezing air circling the North Pole much further south than normal, causing brutally low temperatures and deadly blizzards.
On Lake Michigan, the wind chill meant temperatures of -23C felt like -47C and caused a “sea smoke” or fog as the air made contact with water that was just above zero. Witnesses likened the effect to a “boiling cauldron” – although it was freezing vapour, not steam, they were seeing.
“I’ve lived here 40 years and until today have never seen a more spectacular display of sea smoke,” said local meteorologist Tom Skilling. “To say it’s brutal out there is an understatement.”
But conditions in Chicago were mild compared with northwestern Minnesota, where it felt like -54C with a wind chill factor.
Experts described the weather as the “coldest air in a generation”. Residents were warned not to venture outside but if they must go out they were advised to avoid breathing deeply – or even talking.
As if the bitter cold wasn’t enough, people across the Midwest reported being alarmed by strange crashing sounds, the result of a phenomenon known as a “frost quake”. This is when a sudden freeze turns water in the soil to ice, which expands causing cracks in the ground and a loud boom. Frost quakes usually happen in the middle of night, when temperatures fall to their lowest.
The polar vortex has so far claimed at least 12 lives and brought a vast region of the US and Canada around the Great Lakes to a standstill.
Some Midwestern cities have been colder than the South Pole, which was -34C on Thursday, or the North Pole, which was -31C.
In Iowa City, the body of an 18-year-old medical student, Gerald Belz, was found outside a building early Wednesday, when the wind chill was around -46C.
The same day, a 70-yearold man was found dead on a street in Detroit. A Milwaukee man froze to death in his garage after shovelling snow while another in Minnesota died after getting home late and finding himself locked out of his house.