GLOBAL WARMING
Arctic Blasts Keeping Northeast in a Deep Freeze
The Nashua Telegraph ^ | 01/22/02 | Anne Wallace Allen
JAY, Vt. – The Northeast has been seized by extreme cold for more than a week now, with wind chill readings so low that even hardy Vermonters are thinking twice about going outside.
“It will take a special attitude to be out there today,” said Bill Stenger, general manager of the Jay Peak ski area, where the afternoon temperature was 14 below zero.
Arctic air has been blowing through the Northeast for the past week, creating wind chills as low as minus 60. The last time the mercury in New York City rose above freezing was Jan. 13 – eight icy days in a row as of Tuesday – and the deep freeze is expected to continue through the weekend.
Temperatures in Massachusetts ranged from 10 degrees in Boston to nine below in Amherst, one of the state’s colder spots, said Jim Notchey, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.
With 20 to 25 mph winds snapping at ears and fingers, the air probably felt much colder, he said: Boston’s air crackled at 21 degrees below zero with wind chill, while Worcester’s 2 degrees at 7 a.m. probably felt more like 24 below.
Other parts of the country are shivering too.
Temperatures never got above zero Tuesday in far northern Minnesota and North Dakota and stayed in the single digits across wide areas of the northern Plains and Great Lakes.
But it is the duration of the cold spell that is getting to people in the Northeast, where the last couple of winters were unseasonably mild.
“It’s remarkable, the longevity of it,” said Tim Morrin, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “It just doesn’t seem like we’re getting a break.”
Harold Clark spent Tuesday morning on a New York City street corner handing out advertising fliers.
“I got on about six layers of clothes – thermal underwear, two sets of sweaters and a coat,” said Clark, 70, as he stomped his feet and rubbed his hands.
At the Pine Street Inn in Boston, the homeless shelter’s 850 beds were full, and another 166 people came in looking for refuge from the cold, said spokeswoman Shepley Metcalf.
“Most of them end up sleeping on the floor of the lobby, on mats and blankets,” Metcalf said. “We won’t turn people away, so we are really crowded.”
Linda Baker, who runs a day-care center at her home in Hyde Park in northern Vermont, kept her six young charges inside while the wind blew sheets of pebble-hard snow across the yard.
“They put wax paper on their feet and skate on the carpet,” Baker said.
Refugees from the cold have been flocking to the Golden Image Sun Centers, a tanning salon in Watertown, N.Y., where the temperature hit 26 below zero just before dawn Tuesday, then struggled to 2 above during the afternoon.
“Everybody wants to come in and get warm from the inside out,” said owner Andrea Morgia. “A few minutes in a booth and your bones are warm and you’re good for the rest of the day.”
Atop Cannon Mountain, a northern New Hampshire ski area, assistant ski patrol director Gareth Slattery tried to ignore the minus-60 wind chill, a product of 27 mph wind gusts and a temperature of 14 below zero.
“Wind chill is if you’re standing out there naked, and I don’t see anyone out there naked,” Slattery said.
“It’s something weathermen use to scare the general public with.”
Despite Slattery’s theory, the cold discouraged all but the most committed skiers at Jay, just a few miles below the Canadian border.
“The guy at the border thought we were nuts when we were going skiing,” said 20-year-old Laura Bresinger, who had come from Montreal.
Her mother, Anne Mary Bresinger, went out to talk to a lone skier, then came back in with her nose red and glasses frosted over and announced that the family would go shopping in Burlington instead of skiing.
Others forced to be outdoors did the best they could to stay warm.
Russell Barbour, 31, took his lunch break inside his truck after a six-hour stretch working outdoors at a Winchester, Mass., construction site.
“I can’t feel enough of my body to tell you how cold I am,” said Barbour, an iron worker from Putnam, Conn.
“The cold isn’t so bad,” he said. “It’s the wind that makes it so horrible. But I’d rather have this than rain or snow. Hey, it pays the bills; I love what I do.” |
