NEW YORK: Millions of Americans awoke on Tuesday to snow, freezing rain and frigid temperatures as an Arctic blast gripped much of the United States, ending a nearly two-year “snow drought” in New York City and putting much of the West into a deep freeze.
Record-breaking cold was expected across the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains and Midwest, with wind chills below minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) reaching the mid-Mississippi Valley in the morning.
The lowest temperature in the country on Tuesday morning was -36 F (-38 C) in the small Colorado town of Briggsdale, population 134.
“That’s crazy,” Katie Sizemore, a barista at the Blue Mug Coffee Bar in Greeley, Colorado, said when told she was near the coldest spot in America.
Greeley, about 30 miles (50 km) south of Briggsdale, was about 13 degrees warmer than its neighbor to the north, but Sizemore said the locals were nonetheless bracing for the cold by dressing in extra layers and cranking up heaters. “We don’t go outside for very long,” she said. –Agencies
