Arctic freeze continues to blast huge swaths of the US with sub-zero temperatures

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — 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 windwhipped 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.

The storm was blamed for at least four weekend deaths around 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 openflame 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-man was pronounced dead after being found in a vehicle on Saturday and on Monday a 40-yearold man was found dead near railroad tracks, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

In Utah, where almost four feet (1.2 meters) 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 (113 kilometers) 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-feet (15-meter) wide avalanche. The victim was swept into a gully and through brush and trees, then remained buried for about fifteen minutes before being found by a companion in the mountains south of Alpine, Wyoming, on Sunday afternoon, according to the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center.

It marked the third U.S. avalanche fatality in recent days, following a Wednesday accident at a California ski resort that killed one person and injured three others, and another that killed a person on Thursday in the Idaho backcountry near the Montana border.

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. Kaitlyn Punzalan was in a car with her husband and some friends heading home to Denver when they were caught in the slide.

“My friend was driving my car and all of a sudden he goes ‘Ah, avalanche!’ And we just look up and see all of this snow coming down towards us,” Punzalan told KUSA-TV. She said it took them about an hour to dig out, with help from others who were on the road. No injuries were reported.

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. 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.

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. 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 F (minus 9 to 6.7 degrees C) 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.

With the potential for record low temperatures in Texas, the state’s electrical grid operator asked consumers to conserve energy. About 11,000 Texas customers were without power Monday, according to poweroutage.us.

Light snow was expected through the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast through Monday and Tuesday, Taylor said, including 2 to 3 inches of snow forecasted for Washington, D.C. — what would be the most snowfall in a day in the nation’s capital in at least two years.

Another round of cold air was expected in coming days to drop south into the Northern Plains and Midwest before reaching the Deep South by the end of the week.

Suspect in Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial killings is charged with the death of a fourth woman

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A New York architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings has been accused in the death of a fourth woman. Authorities announced Tuesday that Rex Heuermann was charged in the killing of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes, of Norwich, Connecticut. Brainard-Barnes was a mother

of two who vanished in 2007 and her remains were found more than three years later along a coastal highway in New York. Heuermann already faces charges in the deaths of three other women. A total of 11 victims were found buried on Jones Beach Island in 2010 and 2011, but investigators say it’s unlikely one person killed all of them.

Justice Department report into Uvalde school shooting expected

this week

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — The report is expected The Justice Department is to be released Thursday. planning this week to reThe school shooting was lease findings of an investigation one of the deadliest in U.S. into the 2022 Uvalde, history. A panel of state Texas, school shooting. lawmakers found in 2022 The department has been that nearly 400 officers responded looking into the law enforcement when a gunman response at stormed the school, but Robb Elementary School, they waited over an hour to where a gunman killed 19 confront the attacker. students and two teachers.