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Some of the coldest temperatures of the season arrive this week.
Laurie Furey clears snow for returning students at South High School on Monday in Minneapolis.(Photo: Elizabeth Flores, AP)
The coldest blast of arctic air so far this winter is moving east across the country, delaying school openings, triggering frostbite concerns and even forcing a Minnesota ski resort to close early over the weekend.
A series of arctic air masses is expected to send temperatures 10-35 degrees below average for early January, with highs ranging from near zero to the teens and 20s across a wide swath of the USA, according to Weather Channel meteorologist Roy Lucksinger.
"It's pretty cold air across a good part of the country," said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in College Park, Md. "It's not an atypical pattern for winter, but the temperatures are still below average."
The first cold wave was blasting the Plains and Great Lakes on Monday. A second, even more frigid air mass is expected to blitz into the Plains, Midwest and East from Tuesday through Thursday, Lucksinger said.
Wind chills will plummet between minus 25 and minus 45 degrees from the northern Plains to the Ohio Valley. At that temperature, frostbite can occur in as little as 10 minutes on exposed skin.
YOUR TAKE: What's the weather like where you are?
In parts of Wisconsin, warnings of wind chills that could approach minus 35 degrees prompted several large school districts in the Green Bay area to delay their openings Monday.
Lee Allinger, superintendent of the Appleton Area School District, said he decides by 6 a.m. whether to start school late or cancel classes altogether.
"Certainly we're concerned with every student, but as a former elementary principal, I'm most concerned about our elementary kids who may walk to school. ... We're worried about that 10-minute factor (for frostbite) being significant," he said.
Allinger said parents can keep children home if they believe weather conditions are unsafe.
In central Minnesota, the high temperatures this week will barely creep above zero and wind chills will hover dangerously low at between minus 20 and minus 35 degrees.
"You can't do this for long," Derreck Rosseau said as he skated Sunday afternoon on Lake George in St. Cloud, Minn. "It gets painful real quick."
The high temperature Monday in International Falls, Minn. — often called "the icebox of the nation" — was 1 degree below zero, the National Weather Service said. The city could warm up to single digits above zero by Thursday.
It was about 10 degrees Monday afternoon in Des Moines as Mark DeBruin tossed tools in the back of a pickup. More than 2 inches of snow had fallen at the construction site where DeBruin was helping convert a former gas station into a youth center. About 7 inches of snow was expected to accumulate during the evening.
"It's pretty much miserable," said DeBruin, who lives in nearby Runnells, Iowa. "At least it's pretty calm and the wind chill is down, but it's just going to get worse and worse."
The snowfall was expected to subside in Iowa on Monday night, but forecasters said it would be followed by frigid temperatures. The wind-chill index by Wednesday morning was expected to drop as low as 40 below and the high temperatures will probably stay below zero during the day throughout much of the state, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kurt Kotenberg.
Some light snow — around 1-3 inches — was in the forecast from the northern Plains to the Northeast early this week, according to AccuWeather. Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland will see snow Monday. New York City and Boston will get it Tuesday.
In the Northeast, high temperatures will be in the 20s from Boston to New York City and Philadelphia for several days this week, AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.
Wind chills could drop into the single digits and below zero in the Southeast on Wednesday, according to the Weather Channel. Birmingham, Ala., is forecast to see a wind chill near zero overnight into Thursday, the weather service said. Parts of Florida are likely to see wind chills in the teens.
There's still some good news for those east of the Rockies: The chill may not be long-lived in the central and eastern U.S.
"It looks like it's going to be cold through the remainder of the week," Oravec said. "By the beginning of next week, temperatures will start to moderate, possibly."
Contributing: The Associated Press; Doug Schneider, Green Bay Press Gazette; David Unze, St. Cloud Times; Jen Zettel, The (Appleton, Wis.) Post-Crescent; and Joel Aschbrenner, The Des Moines Register
Kira Lynn, 11, ice fishes for trout Saturday at Wadsworth Lake.(Photo: TRIBUNE PHOTO/LARRY BECKNER)
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