Snow, Icy Winds Hit Upper Midwest

Snow whipped by wind that made it feel as cold as 60 below zero spread across the northern Plains and Great Lakes on Friday as a fast-moving storm called the Alberta Clipper blew out of Canada.

Icy roads prompted more school closings as the mass of bitterly cold air moved eastward and southward, and in Alabama the National Weather Service warned of “a deep freeze all the way to the coast” during the weekend.

Early-morning lows Friday were below zero across North Dakota and northern Minnesota, with a low of 25 degrees below zero making Warroad, Minn., near the Canadian border, the coldest spot in the Lower 48 states. The cold combined with wind to produce wind chills as biting as 60 degrees below zero over northwestern Minnesota.

By mid-afternoon, Warroad was still the coldest spot in the Lower 48 at 18 degrees below zero.

Chills Down to 85 Below

Wind chills all the way down to 80 to 85 below zero were possible early today over northwestern Minnesota, northeastern North Dakota and northeastern South Dakota, the weather service said.

“Even a short exposure to this temperature and wind combination would be dangerous,” the weather service in Minneapolis said.

Since stormy weather began Wednesday night, nine persons nationwide have died in weather-related traffic accidents and while shoveling snow.

A winter storm warning was posted for parts of Northern Michigan, threatened with up to two feet of snow along Lake Superior.

“We’ve got all we need--I think about 12 inches already,” said Dick Seigneurie, proprietor of Mac’s Bar in Ontonagon, a Lake Superior city of about 2,500 residents.

“With as much snow as we’ve got (eight inches in two days), if we get the high winds they say we are going to have, we are going to have problems coming out of our ears,” said state police Sgt. Jim Maturen at Reed City, Mich.

Michigan House Speaker Gary Owen shut down House operations at noon in Lansing, where 3.3 inches had fallen, but Senate employees and other state workers stayed on the job.

On Thursday, snow that spread rapidly over the East prompted the New Jersey and Delaware legislatures to close down for the day and closed schools in half a dozen states.

“She’s really whipping the snow around and across the roads, and the conditions are probably going to get more treacherous,” said state police Sgt. Gary Lyons at Marquette, Mich., where 7.3 inches of snow fell from midnight Thursday to Friday afternoon.

In northern West Virginia, freezing rain that left a sheet of ice, followed by pelting snow, was blamed for a 10-car pileup that blocked traffic Friday along a stretch of Interstate 79. No injuries were reported, the state police said.