Record Lows Blow In on Winds of Arctic Blast

Cold air rushing southward from the Arctic Circle dropped temperatures around the upper Great Lakes to more than 20 degrees below zero Tuesday, and the Deep South braced for snow and ice-covered highways.

It was cooler at one point Tuesday morning in Phoenix than it was in Anchorage, Alaska, as a relatively warm high-pressure mass squeezed the cold air southward.

Snow, sleet and freezing rain also pelted the mid-Atlantic states, closing schools in much of Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Tuesday’s official low for the Lower 48 states was 28 degrees below zero at International Falls, Minn., and 13 cities in the central part of the nation hit record lows.

Morning lows fell below zero from the Dakotas to Michigan. On the southwestern tip of Lake Superior, Superior, Wis., hit 21 below. Across the harbor from Superior, the low at Duluth, Minn., was 22 below zero. Yankton, S.D., also fell to 22 below, a record.

But such severe cold does not seem to slow down shoppers in Duluth, said Susan Latto, director of marketing for the Greater Downtown Council.

“It actually heightens it,” Latto said. She said the cold reminds people that winter really is coming and they start “getting serious” about buying winter clothing.

On the northern Plains, wind combined with cold temperatures producing wind chill effects of 24 below zero at Jamestown, N.D., and 32 below at Fargo, N.D., the National Weather Service reported.

Meteorologist Paul Heidt in Dickinson, N.D., took some of the sting out of that, saying: “Normally we’ll get a cold spell like this in November. We’re overdue.”

Even farther south, at Kansas City, Mo., the low Tuesday was a record 5 degrees below zero. By late morning, the temperature climbed to 14 above zero, the weather service said.

Record low temperatures also were posted in Texas, including 12 degrees in Abilene, 8 in El Paso and 10 in Midland.

In the mid-Atlantic states, all public schools and some colleges closed in Washington, where snow started falling before dawn. But the snow stopped in the afternoon, leaving 1 to 2 inches on the ground.

Most schools in Maryland were closed as a winter storm brushed parts of the state and Delaware with up to 4 inches of snow.

Elsewhere, the cold pushed as far as the normally mild Southwest deserts, where the low in Phoenix was 36 degrees. Even Yuma, Ariz., in the desert near the border with Mexico, chilled to 37 degrees.

“We have a flow of air straight out of the north from southwest Canada. It’s coming almost from the Arctic Circle,” said Craig Ellis, head forecaster for the weather service office in Phoenix.

Ellis noted that at 7 a.m., when Phoenix hit 37, the temperature at Anchorage was 45.

The leading edge of the cold air also pressed into the South, and schools in parts of northern Alabama closed Tuesday in anticipation of sleet and snow that would make travel treacherous.

Rain preceded the snowy cold front, with more than 1 inch recorded in the Centreville area of west-central Alabama.

A snow advisory was posted for northern Mississippi. Freezing temperatures covered northwestern Mississippi, and the weather service reported that there were patches of snow in northern Louisiana.

Texas citrus and vegetable growers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley braced for the arrival of freezing temperatures.

“We get paranoid this time of year,” said Bill Weeks, executive vice president of the Texas Citrus and Vegetable Assn. in Harlingen.