CHICAGO--A blast of polar air brought dangerously low temperatures to much of the U.S. Midwest, causing three more deaths on Wednesday, while halting the mail and forcing residents who pride themselves on their winter hardiness to huddle indoors.
Classes were canceled for Wednesday and Thursday in many cities, including Chicago, home of the nation's third-largest school system, and police warned of the risk of accidents on icy highways. Michigan said all state offices would remain closed through Thursday.
In a rare move, the U.S. Postal Service appeared to temporarily set aside its credo that "neither snow nor rain ... nor gloom of night" would stop its work as it halted deliveries from parts of the Dakotas through Ohio.
At least eight deaths related to extreme cold weather have been reported since Saturday in Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, officials and media reports said.
In Detroit, a 70-year-old man was found dead on Wednesday on a residential street, a Detroit police spokeswoman said. About 15 miles (24 km) south in the community of Ecorse, a former city councilman in his 70s and dressed only in sleepwear was also found dead on Wednesday, Ecorse police said.
A University of Iowa student was found dead outside a building at the campus early on Wednesday, the school said in a statement. The death of Gerald Belz, a pre-med student in his second year at the school, was believed to be weather-related, the statement said.
Streets in Chicago were nearly empty, with few people walking outside in the painfully cold air as temperatures hovered around minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 28 Celsius). "It's terrible!" Pasquale Cappellano, a 68-year-old waiter, said as he smoked a cigarette while waiting outside for a bus on Chicago's North Side. "I gotta pick up my medication at Walgreens or else I wouldn't be out the door."
In Minneapolis, chilled to minus 14 F (minus 26 C), Brian Pierce had ventured out to "embrace the elements" and found himself watching cars slipping on the roads. "The roads sound really weird, it seems there’s a lack of grip," he said. "And my teeth hurt."
Wind-chill temperatures in parts of the Northern Plains and Great Lakes plunged to as low as minus 42 F (minus 41 C) in Park Rapids, Minnesota, and minus 31 F (minus 35 C) in Fargo, North Dakota, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The frigid winds were headed for the U.S. East Coast later on Wednesday into Thursday.
More than a thousand flights, close to two-thirds of those scheduled, were canceled on Wednesday into or out of Chicago O'Hare and Chicago Midway international airports, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. Amtrak canceled all trains in and out of Chicago on Wednesday.
At the Morning Joy Farm in Mercer, North Dakota, Annie Carlson said her horses and sheep were doing fine. "They can go into the barn if they wish," she said. "They're snuggled in, warm and toasty." Her chickens, ducks and guinea hens were enjoying the 70-degree F (21 C) climate inside their greenhouse-like hoop house, she said.
Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the NWS, said some of the coldest wind chills were recorded in International Falls, Minnesota, at minus 55 F (minus 48 C). Even the South Pole in Antarctica was warmer, with an expected low of minus 24 F (minus 31C) with wind chill.
Temperatures in Chicago will drop again "quite precipitously" on Wednesday night, Orrison said, potentially breaking the record low of minus 27 F (minus 33 C) on Jan. 21, 1985, the same day as Ronald Reagan's second presidential inauguration.
