As the middle of the nation awoke on Thursday, the deep freeze seemed to have settled in for a long, unwanted visit, disrupting life across an entire region for much of a week, contributing to deaths and injuries, and leaving residents impatient to emerge from their homes and get back to normal.
The grim temperatures and gusty winds lingered in the Midwest, and had spread to the Northeast.
Here are the latest developments:
— Temperatures remained low, near record levels, in much of the Midwest on Thursday morning. Minneapolis was minus 23, with a wind chill of minus 38, the National Weather Service said. Chicago was at minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 41. And Milwaukee hit minus 21, with a wind chill of minus 40.
— At least eight deaths have been connected to the Midwest’s dangerously cold weather system, according to The Associated Press, including that of a University of Iowa student who was found behind an academic hall several hours before dawn on Wednesday.
— The sustained cold taxed energy systems across the Midwest, leading to some outages and urgent calls to customers to reduce the heat in their homes.
— Many schools, businesses and restaurants were expected to remain shuttered on Thursday, though some offices were reopening and many more were expected to reopen Friday, when temperatures are expected to rise.
— Airlines have already canceled more than 2,000 flights scheduled for Thursday in the United States, according to FlightAware. On Wednesday, cancellations topped 2,700.
— The East Coast was feeling the bitter cold, too. At 6 a.m. the temperature in New York City hit 2 degrees, but with the wind it felt like 17 below zero.
Hospitals have treated dozens of frostbite patients
Throughout the Midwest, hospitals reported patients arriving with symptoms tied to the weather. The Illinois Department of Public Health said at least 30 people statewide had been to emergency rooms for frostbite or hypothermia-related visits by Wednesday morning.
At Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, the emergency department reported “many patients” who were injured or ill because of the weather. Frostbite cases alone led to at least 13 admissions.
“It’s busier than it would normally be,” Douglas D. Brunette, an emergency room doctor in Minneapolis, said Wednesday afternoon. “But it’s not a mass casualty incident yet.”
Schools and colleges close to keep students out of the cold
Schools across a broad section of the nation canceled classes as the dangerous freeze descended, and some said they were pondering canceling classes again Thursday. Many Midwestern institutions lean toward staying open through snowstorms and cold spells, but this one was different. For a second consecutive day, students on Wednesday were told to stay home at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, where there was a forecast high of minus 3, relatively warm compared with other parts of the Midwest.
Hundreds of thousands of younger students in schools across the country’s midsection also had no classes Wednesday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.