Artic Blast Grips Northeast; Plummets Region Into Deep Freeze

Details: Category: Earth, Air, Space Science; Published on Saturday, 04 February 2023 09:30; Written by Janet Walker

A once-in-a-generation artic blast has plunged the northeast, from New York through the New England states effecting more than 25million residents, into a deep freeze coupled with gusting winds creating bitter, biting, subzero wind chills and temperatures.

The historic polar blast drove the northeast into an artic freeze breaking records from the Lower Great Lakes, Middle Atlantic and Northeast regions, with gusting winds that created the lowest all-time temperatures ever recorded in the United States with a bitter-cold -109 degrees at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire.

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"The National Weather Service office serving the Boston region described the cold as "a historic Arctic outbreak for the modern era," and warned that "this is about as cold as it will ever get,"' reported The Washington Post.

The brutal winter cold snap will affect millions throughout the weekend, with Manhattan experiencing temperatures of -40 degrees, as wind chills drive the "feel like" temperatures so low that residents were warned to prepare for the deep freeze and the possibility of cold weather damage.

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Temperatures will remain extremely low on Saturday, and coupled with wind chills can result in frostbite in less and 30 minutes for any exposed area of skin. These are extremely dangerous temperatures and if at all possible, residents should stay indoors.

The extreme cold resulted in unprecedented damage included frost-quakes, a phenomenon like an earthquake when the ground moves as the water under the surface expands; trees splitting apart resulting in loud "shotgun" booms, as well as the customary frozen and bursting pipes.

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"The temperatures were so extreme in Maine that residents reported "frost quakes," or cryoseisms. The earthquake-like tremors are caused by rapidly plummeting temperatures, which cause water trapped in cracks in the ground to expand," reported The Washington Post.

Temperature were so low that even the National Weather Service equipment had reached capacity in calculations, according to a tweet that the software refused to include the temperatures.

The cold air mass that has settled on the region is expected to slowly dissipate through Sunday and after the weekend blast of polar air, temperatures are expected to return to seasonal February lows, although the National Weather Service predicts that as the week begins, temperature will still be 10 to 30 degrees below normal, the gusting winds that drove the temperatures to deadly levels will diminish and the traditionally brutal February in most of the northeast will moderate to customary lows.