Bone-chilling lows carry high risk
With minus 20s expected, shelters, responders get ready
What’s being billed as a once-in-a-generation deep freeze will hit Wisconsin Tuesday night through Friday morning, bringing dangerously low temperatures and wind chills that haven’t been seen in a couple of decades. Sure, it gets cold in Wisconsin, but not this cold. Temperatures will plummet, winds will howl and records will be broken as the state gets locked in a freezer swooping down from the North Pole.
“The intensity of this cold air, I would say, is once in a generation,” said John Gagan, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Sullivan.
Monday night, Milwaukee Public Schools announced that schools would be closed Tuesday for the third straight day, and after-school activities were canceled.
It’s likely that other school districts, government
agencies and businesses — many of which closed because of Monday’s snow — could close again Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday because of the brutally cold temperatures.
A low temperature of around minus 22 is forecast Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and a low around minus 23 Wednesday
night into Thursday morning. Add in winds of 15 to 20 mph with gusts of 30 mph, and wind chills are likely to drop to minus 45 to minus 50.
The National Weather Service issued a wind chill advisory from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday in parts of western and south-central Wisconsin, followed by wind chill warnings from 6 p.m. Tuesday until noon Thursday.
During the day Wednesday, the high temperature is expected to be a frosty minus 12. That’s not wind chill, that’s actual thermometer readings.
“To be outside for any length of time with wind chills minus 40 or colder is dangerous, or even deadly,” said Jeff Last, National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist in Green Bay. “If you have to be out, make sure you dress in layers and try to limit the amount of time outside as much as you can. Make sure all skin is covered.”
Gov. Tony Evers declared a state of emergency in Wisconsin, which gives Wisconsin’s adjutant general authority to call National Guardsmen to active duty to support emergency responders if needed.
The cold front was ushered in by a snowstorm that dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of Wisconsin Monday, with snowfall totals including 7.4 inches in West Allis, 12.1 in Mequon, 10.5 in Kewaskum, 12 in Sheboygan Falls, 12.5 in Ripon, 14.8 in Montello, 11 in Fredonia, 12 in West Bend and 15 in Sheboygan.
Of course, many people will continue to work through the cold, including Chris Nieman, president of Nieman’s Service Inc., a towing and recovery company in Wisconsin Rapids.
Nieman said the next few days will be all about wearing three or four layers of clothing, extra gloves and keeping trucks ready.
“We leave our trucks running when it gets that cold just in case we get an emergency call where someone is stranded,” he said. “Everything on the truck, we make sure it’s ready to go in the cold weather.”
It’ll be busy, too. Nieman anticipates his business will field as many as 60 service calls a day during the cold stretch as motorists try to start their cars and get no response from dead batteries and frozen engines.
Homeless shelters are adding beds and staying open longer, communities are opening warming rooms and animal shelters are preparing to handle an influx of injured animals.
A handful of frostbite and hypothermia cases have been brought to Wisconsin Humane Society shelters, where dog walking routines have been changed because of the snow and cold.
Dogs are taken outside only long enough to relieve themselves, and pawcleaning stations are set up at doors with towels so dogs don’t lick off sidewalk salt, which can cause gastrointestinal problems, said Wisconsin Humane Society spokeswoman Angela Speed. Also, the humane society’s public vaccine clinic and spay/neuter clinic in Milwaukee on Wednesday was canceled because the agency doesn’t want to encourage people to travel with their pets.
It got super cold in January 2014, when the term “polar vortex” became a part of many Wisconsinites’ vocabulary. But for the last time temperatures dropped this low, you have to page through the record books to 1996.
On Feb. 3, 1996, it was minus 26 in Milwaukee with wind chills as low as minus 49.
“I think what we’re having is a shock to the system,” said Gagan. “We’ve been above average for a while.”
It was downright balmy from the middle of November through the middle of January. Perhaps folks were lulled into thinking this winter wasn’t so bad as ice scrapers stayed in glove boxes and shovels and snow blowers accumulated dust and cobwebs.
The record low temperature for Wednesday (Jan. 30) is minus 24 in Milwaukee and minus 37 in Madison, both set in 1951. In fact, that’s Madison’s alltime record low, according to weather service records.
While it’s not likely those records will be broken, it’s probable records for the coldest high temperatures for Jan. 30 and Jan 31 will fall. The record lowest high temperature for Milwaukee on Wednesday is minus 3 set in 1851; Madison’s is minus 1 set a century later, in 1951.
On Thursday, Milwaukee’s record low of minus 15 dates to 1899, while Madison’s record low of minus 22 was set in 1985. The coldest high temperature for that day in Milwaukee and Madison is minus 6, with Milwaukee’s record set in 1971 and Madison’s in 1918.
Wisconsin’s all-time low is minus 55, recorded in Sawyer County on Feb. 4, 1996, according to the Wisconsin State Climatology Office.
The lowest January temperature in Green Bay was minus 36 in 1888; in Milwaukee, minus 26 in 1982; and in Wausau, minus 40 in 1948.
The normal temperatures for this time of year in Milwaukee and Madison? High 20s and lows in the midteens.
Now that everyone knows what a polar vortex is — or thinks they do — it won’t be a surprise to learn that this week’s cold sock to the jaw is also from the polar vortex. The weather phenomenon never goes away; it’s always hovering somewhere above Earth. But it does travel, and right now the polar vortex has punched its ticket to Wisconsin.
There are actually two polar vortices, one at each pole. Beneath the upper-level low-pressure areas are large masses of cold, dense Arctic air. That North Pole air is sweeping south straight at us, almost as if Wisconsin is a frozen bull’seye.
“It will be consisting of some of the coldest air that the globe has to offer,” said Dave Samuhel, senior meteorologist with accuweather.com.
Wisconsin will be stationed between high- and low-pressure systems, which means frigid Arctic winds will funnel into the region. Plus, all the snow on the ground from the last three storms is like throwing ice in cocktail glasses.
“There’s nothing but snow cover from Milwaukee right up to the North Pole now. The air is able to travel south without moderating (warming) because of the snow cover,” Samuhel said.
If folks can get through Tuesday night through Friday morning, there’s good news. The forecast calls for a gradual warming with highs on Friday in the upper teens. And, for another shock to the system — this weekend is expected to be in the 30s with rain.
“It will be consisting of some of the coldest air that the globe has to offer.” Dave Samuhel, senior meteorologist with accuweather.com