Even Hell Has Frozen Over

Every US state saw freezing temperatures yesterday
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 8, 2014 7:39 AM CST

Here's how cold it is: Hell has frozen over. OK, so we're talking about Hell, Mich., a small town 60 miles west of Detroit where temperatures have dropped as low as -4 degrees (or -27 when wind chill is considered), Time reports. In fact, at some point yesterday, each one of the 50 states saw freezing temperatures, the AP reports. (The spot in Hawaii where it hit 18 degrees: the top of a dormant volcano.) Needless to say, quite a few temperature records have been shattered. More weather news:

  • CNN has a number of other "fun" facts, such as: At least one city in Siberia is actually warmer than certain parts of the US right now. And in Embarrass, Minn., the coldest temperature in the US yesterday (-35 degrees) was actually colder than recent readings from ... Mars, the BBC reports. Parts of the Midwest were colder than the inside of a freezer, and as cold as a winter day on the Antarctic coast, at -14. (Antarctica, meanwhile, was warming to the point where ships trapped in ice broke free yesterday.)
  • Authorities attribute 21 deaths since Sunday to the cold, including 11 from traffic accidents, five people who collapsed while shoveling snow, and three deaths involving hypothermia.

  • Some good news: Airline cancellations are abating, with fewer than 50 flights expected to be canceled tomorrow, CNN reports.
  • And the vaunted polar vortex is on its way out: This week, it will be pushed up into Canada. By Saturday, Cincinnati (which hit -7 degrees yesterday) should hit 50 degrees, and New York (which saw -4 degrees in Central Park yesterday) should be over 50 by then. Right now there's a freeze warning in place for Gulf Coast regions, but by the weekend the highs will hover around 70 degrees. In fact, in much of the US, temperatures will go up about 10 degrees per day, until it gets unseasonably warm.
  • Which is probably a good thing for some, considering how many people have been hurt after throwing boiling water into the outside air to watch it freeze. Another "dumb-but-amusing cold weather video" going viral involves a guy launching himself onto a frozen trampoline.
  • In Kentucky, it got so cold Monday that an escaped inmate turned himself in so he could warm up.
(More polar vortex stories.)

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