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Minus 100 Degrees. That’s How Cold It Could Feel Atop Mount Washington
An Eyelash-Freezing ‘Icy Hell’: The One Spot That Could Feel Like Minus 100
(about 4 hours later)
The winter storm that barreled from Florida to Maine and cloaked the East Coast in snow has moved on, but frigid air — and plenty of icy, then slushy, messes — will linger for days.
GORHAM, N.H. — The moment you step out into the frozen air on the way up Mount Washington — considered the most frigid spot in the lower 48 — the icy wind steals your breath and freezes your eyelashes. You can’t blink. The cold stabs your face and numbs your earlobes to rubber.
“While conditions have begun to improve across the Northeastern U.S., the arctic surge is already underway accompanied by brisk winds at times,” the National Weather Service said in a forecast early Friday. “Dangerously low wind chill temperatures are to be expected the next couple of days with some blowing snow possible.”
“It’s an icy hell,” said Amy Loughlin, 50, who was visiting from Austin, Tex., and scaling the mountain, the highest in the Northeast, in the back of a SnowCoach — a van retrofitted with tanklike treads to handle the blowing snow and treacherous roads.
The system, which some forecasters classified as a “bomb cyclone” because of a steep decline in atmospheric pressure, proved paralytic in parts of more than a dozen states, cracking water pipes, shutting down schools, flooding streets and making roads treacherous. The authorities said at least seven fatalities appeared connected to the weather.
With much of the Northeast and Midwest feeling like a block of ice, the temperature here in the high peaks of New Hampshire’s White Mountains was forecast to drop to 40 degrees below zero overnight Friday. The wind chill could make the air feel as cold as 100 below zero. That is not a typo. Negative. 100.
Here’s the latest:
“We should end up being the coldest location tonight in the lower 48,” said Mike Carmon, senior meteorologist at the Mount Washington Observatory, who was one of a handful of scientists and others huddled at the top of one of the most dangerous and forbidding places in the country. “We basically just start saying it’s stupid cold outside.”
• In many places, temperatures are not expected to increase dramatically until next week. The Weather Service said high temperatures will “struggle to get above the single digits” in some areas through Saturday and that “many” records could be broken.
The temperature on Mount Washington had plunged to 26 below on Friday afternoon — 70 degrees below with wind chill factored in. The wind had gusted up to 122 miles per hour. Only specially outfitted vehicles are allowed on the road up the mountain at this time of year, and on Friday, snowdrifts and ferocious winds blocked even the SnowCoach from going farther.
• The forecasted wind chills are particularly worrisome for emergency officials. Meteorologists said parts of Maine could experience wind chills of minus 40, but the bitter cold was not restricted to the East Coast’s northernmost areas. Wind chills could reach minus 15 in the North Carolina mountains and 25 below zero in parts of eastern Pennsylvania.
It was only getting worse here and all across the Northeast in the wake of a “bomb cyclone” that turned Boston streets into an Arctic sea and left three-foot snowdrifts across New England. Weather forecasters were predicting temperature lows that could shatter century-old records in Worcester, Mass., Hartford and elsewhere.
• Airlines have canceled nearly 1,500 flights that were scheduled for Friday, according to FlightAware, an aviation monitoring website. The storm forced airlines to scrub about 5,500 flights on Thursday, and FlightAware said Friday morning that it expected the aviation industry “to begin recovering this afternoon.”
Millions of people from Florida to Maine were left shivering as schools closed and flights were canceled this week. Officials said that seven deaths appeared to be tied to the weather.
• Many school districts that were closed on Thursday resumed classes on Friday. Students returned in New York City, home to the nation’s largest public school district, and Washington. But classes were still canceled in Boston and Philadelphia, among other places.
Windows splintered. Car batteries died. Along the Maine coastline, the flooding left icebergs in people’s yards. Ice fishermen had to keep their smelt bait close to them for fear it would freeze solid. Even snowmobiles coughed and sputtered and refused to start.
• Utility companies reported they had restored electricity to tens of thousands of customers. A major electric company in Virginia said Friday morning that about 3,000 home and businesses lacked electricity, down from more than 40,000 on Thursday.
Across this American tundra, people called their heating-oil companies for emergency supplies and sat stranded on the sides of roads as tow-truck companies reported five-hour wait times to jump-start a dead battery or tow away a snowbound car. People slept in winter coats and debated whether wool, cotton or silk made for the best long underwear.
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In Schenectady, N.Y., it got so cold and drafty that Chris Bendix, an engineering student, rigged up a “blanket cave” by raising a bed, hanging blankets from the side and sleeping inside the makeshift cave, snug against the baseboard heaters.
At the summit of Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, often one of the coldest places in New England during a winter storm, furious winds are expected to make the air feel as frigid as 100 degrees below zero.
In Morrill, Me., Carrie Hall, 42, alternated between feeding applewood logs into her stove, shoveling snow and fortifying herself with sips of whiskey. And while recordkeepers were watching the thermometers as the temperatures fell, Ms. Hall had stopped paying attention.
“With dangerously low wind chills and poor visibilities from thick fog, falling snow and blowing snow, treacherous conditions will prevail above treeline into tomorrow before slowly beginning to improve,” Caleb Meute, a staff meteorologist at the Mount Washington Observatory, wrote in a forecast on Friday morning, adding that actual temperatures could reach 40 degrees below zero and said exposed skin could be frostbitten within one minute.
“What does it matter?” she said. “It’s freezing no matter what the number says it is. It’s just awful.”
Two of our reporters, Katherine Q. Seeyle and Jess Bidgood, are road tripping to Mount Washington on Friday, and capturing their journey on Twitter.
Atop Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet above sea level, there is no avoiding the cold. In fact, people here almost brag about it.
Here’s one photograph from 3,900 feet.
“We’re not necessarily the coldest in the country; we’re not necessarily the windiest — it’s the combination that we have of the winds and the temperatures and a lot of fog and a lot of snow,” Mr. Carmon said. That, he said, “is why we consider ourselves one of the most extreme places on earth.”
“Feels like the wind is sucking your breath out of you,” Ms. Bidgood wrote. “Your lashes want to freeze together, and your eyes just ache. And we’re not at top!”
The meteorologists make hourly trips outside to check their instruments and measure the temperature, wind speed and precipitation. So they sheathe themselves in five layers and pull on ski masks and goggles. But the cold always finds a way to sneak in.
Follow them on Twitter here, @jessbidgood and @kseelye.
“It kind of feels like you’re stepping out into a pool of cold water,” Mr. Carmon said.
Temperature records have been falling along the East Coast all week, and forecasters said Friday and Saturday were likely to force even more updates to their record books.
Even within a few minutes of standing outside at 3,900 feet — two-thirds of the way up — toes and fingers, including those wrapped in multiple layers of clothing, can quickly go numb. The wind turns snowflakes into projectiles that feel as if they are piercing any skin that is exposed.
Meteorologists thought a 113-year-old record for the coldest maximum temperature of any Jan. 5 in Hartford, Conn. — 18 degrees — would change on a day when the projected high was just 12.
It was enough to send Ms. Loughlin back into the SnowCoach while her husband, James, continued to brave the elements.
The story was much the same in Bridgeport, Conn., where Friday’s predicted maximum high temperature of 14 would break a 22-year-old record by double digits.
“Love you, mean it!” she shouted to him over the howling wind as she sought shelter.
In Worcester, Mass., a record on the books since 1904 was likely to fall, too, with a high of 8 expected.
Mr. Loughlin, whose face was unprotected, returned moments later, his face a stinging red and his eyelashes stuck together.
But forecast and historical data compiled by Jessica Spaccio, a climatologist at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, suggested that Jan. 5 records would likely hold up in places like Boston, Portland, Me., and Concord, N.H.
“I learned a valuable lesson out there,” he said. “Goggles.”
Saturday, though, could challenge history in all three cities. The predicted highs for Boston (8 degrees) and Portland (4 degrees) are just one degree above their records, and Concord was expected to tie its coldest high temperature for the day: 2 degrees.
Just driving on the roads around here was an ordeal on Friday, as one young couple found out after they spent Thursday night in a nearby cabin. So much snow piled up so quickly that their car was trapped. They were left trying to shovel a path to the highway, as the snow blew horizontally around them.
The temperature was 15 degrees. Snow, recently piled up on the piers and docks, had been partly cleared. And ice — 5 or 6 inches thick in some spots — still floated in the waters around the Port of New Bedford, Mass.
Others viewed the weather as something to take advantage of. Surfers paddled into the breaks in Cape Elizabeth, Me.
No matter.
Tim Denoncour, 26, and Ian Hancock, 25, were preparing their skis at the base of Mount Washington to spend the day avalanche training. Both used to cold weather, they seemed relatively unfazed at the prospect of being on the mountain in the deep freeze.
“Friday is a big day for fish, and today is no different,” Edward Anthes-Washburn, the port director, said in a telephone interview. “We’re back to normal.”
Mr. Denoncour said he knows it is cold “when I can’t feel my face after five minutes.”
The winter storm and the subfreezing temperatures paused New England’s seafood industry and, in the case of New Bedford, prompted several hundred vessels to come into the port.
But as eye-popping as the wind chill and “real feel” temperatures may be, scientists say they are an imperfect way to measure the cold.
The United States Coast Guard broke up ice throughout the region, and in New Bedford, south of Boston, workers had a tugboat they could use to tear through some ice.
The concept of wind chill traces back to Antarctica, where two scientists, Paul Siple and Charles Passel, came up with a way of measuring how wind affects cold. Their simple experiment in the 1940s involved hanging plastic bottles of water in the wind to see how quickly they froze. From that, they extrapolated the relationship between cold and wind that suggests what it feels like outside, and the likely effect on exposed skin, that make for the highlight of so many winter weather forecasts.
Mr. Anthes-Washburn said his port had not yet summoned the Coast Guard, as it did in 2015. But he said that the early tenor of this winter suggested he would eventually need to.
But the use of wind chill as a way to measure cold is problematic — especially in places like Mount Washington, which is known for its extreme environment, said Greg Carbin, chief of the forecast operations branch for the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
“We likely will need it at some point this season,” he said on Friday morning, when the thermometer read 15 degrees. “In 2015, it wasn’t until February and March that we had the ice. So the fact that we’re in early January and there’s pretty significant ice floes already, we’ll likely need them if not sooner, certainly later.”
“A lot of people aren’t going to be exposed to the extreme wind,” he said. “Who’s going to be out walking in an 80-mile-per-hour wind?”
“Last night was a quieter one for troopers on our highways,” said Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina on Friday. “It appears that many people heeded the warnings and stayed off the roads, and there were far fewer collisions.”
Still, he said this winter’s temperatures have been “very, very unusual.”
Mr. Cooper, though, said icy areas remained, particularly on surface and residential streets.
“Chicago has felt more like Bismarck, and New York City has felt more like Anchorage,” he said. “From Minnesota to Massachusetts, it’s been brutally cold over the last week, and it will continue into next week before we see a change,” he said.
The North Carolina authorities have blamed the storm for four deaths, all of which involved traffic accidents.
But behind it, he predicted, would come relief. “The thaw is coming,” he said. “We just have to hold out for about another week.”
Blue skies and sunshine are in store for Friday and Saturday in the New York area, but with highs near 15 and lows around 9, it will feel like 5 or 10 below zero with the wind.
A wind chill advisory remains in effect until Saturday morning. Hat and gloves are an absolute must. Read more here with New York Today.
In southern Delaware, where snowstorms and long, frigid winter stretches are less common than in the Northeast, homeless shelters have had to organize opening during the day — not just as night — to accommodate people.
“With the frigid temperatures, you can’t really be walking around,” said Nikki Gonzalez, executive director for Code Purple Sussex County, a network that organizes shelters and volunteers to staff them. “You know, Delaware is not really used to a ton of snow.”
Her group has two shelters, in the towns of Milford and Seaford, opening during the day through Sunday, in addition to another four shelters opening overnight.
The recent bitter cold has made it a challenge to find overnight volunteers able to drive to shelters, and to secure meals for the homeless, Ms. Gonzalez said. Last weekend, she “put out a plea” on social media when one location was in need of dinner, and a friend came through with pizza.
“Facebook is a pretty good avenue to instantly get some help,” she said.
Sophia Smith thought she had beaten the “bomb cyclone.” But minutes after boarding a New York-bound plane on Thursday morning, a text message from the airline arrived.
Her flight was canceled.
Ms. Smith’s trip home from Orlando, Fla., was among the thousands of flights scrapped on Thursday as a winter storm pounded the Northeast and sent problems rippling out to airports across the country.
Some airlines offered refunds and notified travelers of the cancellations hours in advance, drawing praise from stranded passengers. But many other travelers found themselves marooned in airports far from home and frustrated by limited options for rebooking.
In Ms. Smith’s case, she said her airline offered two unpalatable choices: take an eight-hour trip on Friday with a layover in out-of-the-way Dallas, or wait and fly direct to New York on Sunday. She chose the latter.
“I was happy to kind of rearrange my travel plans in light of the weather,” said Ms. Smith, a Brooklyn resident who had hoped to return to her theater work. But she said the airline’s options were “ridiculous.” Read more here.
Boston’s Long Wharf area became a slushy mess when a three-foot tidal surge pushed floodwaters into buildings and down the steps of the Aquarium mass transit station on Thursday. Firefighters rescued one person who was trapped in a car that had water nearly to its door handles.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen the water come this high in the downtown area,” Joseph Finn, the city’s fire commissioner, said then as the wind whipped heavy snow through the air.
Mr. Finn said emergency workers had made some other rescues in coastal areas of the city, helping people out of stranded cars in the icy water, and city officials said flooding had extended to other neighborhoods, including the Seaport, Dorchester and East Boston.
On Friday, the National Weather Service confirmed that Thursday’s peak tide of 4.88 feet was the highest ever recorded in Boston. The previous record, of 4.82 feet, was set during the Blizzard of ’78.
Some scientists studying the connection between climate change and cold spells, which occur when cold Arctic air dips south, say that they may be related. But the importance of the relationship is not fully clear yet. Read more here.
When temperatures dip into the 30s and 40s, Floridians know to be on the lookout for reptiles stunned — but not necessarily killed — by the cold. They can come back to life again when it warms up.
In Boca Raton, Frank Cerabino, a Palm Beach Post columnist familiar with the creatures, stepped outside and saw a bright green specimen by his pool on Thursday morning, feet up.
“He didn’t move,” Mr. Cerabino said. “But he’s probably still alive. My experience is that they take a while to die.”
