Climate: Record Cold in the US

An Arctic front has engulfed much of the United States, placing a large part of the western region in severe frost conditions. Record cold has hit the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and the Midwest region, with cold winds dropping temperatures to -34 degrees Celsius in the middle of the Mississippi Valley. The lowest temperature recorded on Tuesday morning in the United States was -36 degrees Celsius in Briggsdale, a small town in Colorado. In New York, which hasn't seen a snowfall larger than 2.5 cm for almost two years, residents woke up to a winter landscape outside their windows. Central Park in Manhattan was covered with a 3.5-centimeter layer of snow on Tuesday morning, putting an end to a "snow drought" of 701 days, during which it barely snowed in the American metropolis. "That negative streak is over!" announced the New York office of the National Weather Service (NWS) on Facebook, prompting users to comment on what most locals considered a pleasant surprise.

Overnight, a 10-12 cm layer of snow fell in Washington DC, and the snow in Baltimore and Philadelphia formed a thick layer of 5-7 cm. An additional 5-10 cm of snow is expected to accumulate across the New England region, extending to New York, before a brief break from the cold weather in the middle of this week, according to the NWS. Snow also covered the Appalachian Mountains and western North Carolina, while southern US states are experiencing unusually cold temperatures, according to Bob Oravec from the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. The city of Nashville, Tennessee, "which doesn't see much snow," has received a snowfall of 15-20 cm, said the American meteorologist. Residents of Mobile, Alabama, in the deep south of the US, woke up to freezing rain and a rare temperature of -0.5 degrees Celsius. Nationally, at least five people have died as a result of severe weather since last weekend, including two due to hypothermia suffered in recent days in the state of Oregon, local media reported. A series of major power outages that occurred last weekend have been remedied, but 50,000 families in Oregon were still without electricity on Tuesday morning. Tens of thousands of families faced the same issue in Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama, according to data from the PowerOutage.us website.

The Texas power grid operator has asked residents of this American state to conserve electricity due to high demand during the winter storm. Over 3,000 flights to, from, or within the United States have been canceled or delayed, with George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston and LaGuardia Airport in New York experiencing some of the most severe disruptions to air traffic.