Extremely low temperatures are destroying records in the northeastern United States.
Conditions that pose a threat to human life are created when a deadly mix of record-setting low temperatures and high winds occur.
An infant died in Massachusetts on Saturday as a result of the hazardous combination of record-breaking cold temperatures and strong winds that pounded the northeastern United States.
A wind chill of -78°C was measured overnight on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, which appears to be a record low for the country. Wind chill is a measurement of how cold air and wind make skin feel. According to the Mount Washington Observatory, the peak’s air temperature was negative -44°C with wind gusts of about 160 km/h.
The Hampden district attorney said in a statement that the strong winds caused a tree to fall upon a car in Southwick, Massachusetts, smashing it and killing a baby passenger. With severe wounds, the driver was taken to the hospital.
The NWS reported that the low temperature in Boston, where authorities shut down the public school system on Friday due to the imminent freeze, reached -23°C, breaking the previous record for the day set more than a century earlier. The temperature in Providence, Rhode Island, plummeted to -23°C, a significant decrease from the previous record low of -19°C established in 1918.
The NWS reported that the arctic blast moving into the United States from eastern Canada caused record low temperatures in a number of locations, including Albany, New York; Augusta, Maine; Rochester, New York; and Worcester, Massachusetts.
In addition to reports of “frostquakes,” which are tremors that resemble earthquakes but are really generated by the soil cracking unexpectedly in the cold, the NWS office in Caribou, Maine, said it had also received reports of trees splitting apart, perhaps as a result of sap freezing inside the trunks.
As a result of the extreme cold, several cities opened warming centres and carried out outreach to make sure that the homeless were protected from the elements.
According to Barbara Trevisan, a spokeswoman for Pine Street Inn, the largest provider of homeless services in New England, Boston increased the number of vans scouring the city’s streets on Friday and Saturday.
The weather was going to be quite harsh, so they started going out early this week, she said. “People’s safety and survival were the only priorities yesterday night.”
The city’s primary rail station, South Station, was required to remain open all night as an emergency shelter by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. According to Trevisan, there were between 50 and 60 homeless people who spent the night in the station.
The temperatures caused many ski slopes to restrict operations. Jay Peak, a ski resort in northern Vermont close to the Canadian border, was completely closed on Friday and Saturday due to the risk to the skiers and personnel.
The cold weather was predicted to pass quickly because Sunday’s temperatures were going to be much higher. The NWS predicted that Sunday’s high in Boston will be close to 8.3°C.
