Frigid Weather Alert: Will Arctic Blast Close Schools?

It’s going to be brutal out there through at least Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service says. (Patch file photo)

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Oakland County warming centers are bursting at the seams, attracting more guests as an Arctic clipper brings a blast of frigid air to southeast Michigan than they did during last year’s back-to-back polar vortex systems.

“The weather is lethal,” Jason Morgan, the executive director of Welcome Inn Day Center, which operates a warming center in Royal Oak, told The Oakland Press.

The center,, located at the Starr Presbyterian Church through the nonprofit South Oakland Citizens for the Homeless, is one of several open in the area. By early afternoon, about 90 people had come to the warming center to take the chill off.

Thursday’s high temperature is expected to top out at 8 degrees, but wicked winds will make it feel more like -15 to -24 through 4 p.m. Thursday, according to the National Weather Service in White Lake. A wind chill advisory that took effect at 7 p.m. Wednesday remains in effect until Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Free Press reports.

By 7 p.m., no area schools had cancelled classes for Thursday. That doesn’t mean they won’t. While some charter schools have closed, officials at most public schools will decide whether to keep kids home Thursday morning.

In general, schools close when dangerous temperatures and wind chills carrying a high risk of frostbite in 30 minutes or less. Farmington Public Schools, for example, close when the actual temperature combined with wind chill considerations would be greater (colder) than -20 to -25 degrees below zero.

“It’s going to be brutally cold out there,” said Sara Schultz, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in White Lake Township. “Bundle up and do whatever you can to stay warm.”

Frostbite can occur on skin exposed to wind-chill temperatures of -19 for 30 minutes.

That’s a concern for the volunteers working to ease homelessness in Oakland County, where an estimated 3,503 homeless residents were homeless in 2013, the last year for which Alliance for Housing statistics were available.

The South Oakland Citizens for the Homeless, which operates the Welcome Inn Day Center, said this is the busiest season in the organization’s 11-year history. During last winter’s blizzards, the most people to visit the center in a single day was 77, Morgan said.

When the Royal Oak center closes for the day, guests are bussed to Ferndale’s Renaissance Vineyard Church, one of eight churches offering overnight shelter on a rotating basis. On Jan. 12, St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Royal Oak will take over as the overnight shelter.

The Welcome Inn Day Center and cooperating churches offer emergency respite from the cold from December to March.