Records Broken as Cold Settles Across Rockies, Midwest

Temperatures plunged below zero from the Rockies into the Midwest on Wednesday, closing schools, crippling cars and sending volunteers into the streets looking for homeless people to bring indoors.

In West Yellowstone, Mont., a hamlet on the doorstep of Yellowstone National Park and a frequent cold spot, the mercury plummeted to 45 below, shattering the record for Dec. 7 of 39 below set in 1927.

“I played taxi service this morning to a lot of my employees because their cars wouldn’t start,” said Gayle Archer, a manager at one of the town’s motels who watched fellow residents ski to work on unplowed streets.

In Denver, the coroner was trying to determine if the death of a homeless man was caused by temperatures that dropped to 11 below. His body was found huddled against a fence.

Schools in the Colorado Springs area were closed and many others statewide opened late.

The cold extended south to the Texas Panhandle, where Lubbock logged a record low of 6 above zero.

Officials at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport said freezing rain was expected to force the cancellation of about 400 flights -- 40% of all departures.

“It’s just pretty cold,” said Charles Bowers, a rancher and cotton farmer near Pampa, a town 145 miles south of Lubbock where it was 10 degrees at noon with a wind chill of 11 below.

Temperatures read like baseball scores in northeastern New Mexico -- zero at Las Vegas and 1 at Raton. “I’m sitting here in my office and it’s freezing and we’ve got the heat on full blast,” said Bill Cox, owner of the Hillcrest Restaurant in Las Vegas.

The cold follows a blizzard that blasted much of the Plains on Nov. 27-28, shutting down hundreds of miles of major highways across half a dozen states.

About 3,600 rural customers were still without electricity more than a week later, said Tom Dravland, state public safety secretary.

Lows across the eastern part of the state dipped as low as minus 20.

Inside a 115-year-old cabin on Colorado’s Hohnholz Ranch near the Wyoming line, Bob and Phyllis Hohnholz, both in their 80s, said they were keeping the fireplace blazing and the windows were so frosted they could barely see outside. It was 37 below at the ranch overnight Tuesday -- the coldest spot in the state.

The couple said they hadn’t had to venture outside much because their daughters had been helping with the chores, including feeding 200 cattle and chopping holes in the ice on the Big Laramie River so the animals could drink.

“We don’t mind the cold so much if the wind isn’t blowing,” Phyllis Hohnholz said as the mercury stood at minus-6 shortly before noon.

“I wouldn’t even think of moving to Arizona for the winter,” she said. “It’s just too dry down there.”