Polar Vortex Plunges Midwest In Misery, But Here’s Some Good News

Here’s a bit of good news to warm middle Americans caught in the clutches of the hideously cold polar vortex that is sending temperatures and wind chills to 50 or 60 degrees below zero: The frigid air, the coldest in a quarter of a century in many areas, could wipe out the majority of the emerald ash borer larvae in states like South Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Elsewhere, the life-threatening polar vortex is delivering nothing but misery. The weather is blamed for at least seven deaths in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Governors in Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois have declared states of emergency, scores of schools and universities are closed around the Midwest, and mail delivery has been suspended Wednesday in several states, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

Thousands of flights were canceled Tuesday and again on Wednesday. Many are at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and that could snarl air traffic across the country. The National Weather Service is even warning people not to talk when they’re outside if they don’t have to.

“Make sure your mouth is covered to protect your lungs from severely cold air,” the agency said. “Avoid taking deep breaths; minimize talking.”

'Frost' Or 'Ice' Quakes Reported

It’s so cold that railroad crews in Chicago, where the temperature was minus 22 degrees and the wind chill index at least twice that cold on Wednesday, set kerosene-soaked rope on fire to warm the rails so switching mechanisms would work.

People are having some fun with the record cold. An Illinois police department arrested Elsa from the Disney movie “Frozen” on Tuesday, blaming the Queen of Arendelle for bringing the frigid temperatures to the Midwest. Hardy Minnesotans are facing down the cold with humorous memes on social media — the reasoning being that if they didn't laugh about the brutal temperatures, they'd cry and their tears would freeze. And school administrators at a Michigan school mastered the difficult-to-sing “Hallelujah” in a school cancelation video.

The extreme cold has produced a few weather phenomenons, too. Popping sounds in Illinois were attributed to frost or ice quakes — technically a cryoseism. As Illinois Storm Chasers explained it, a cryoseism is a seismic event potentially caused by a sudden cracking action in soil or rock that's frozen due to being saturated with ice or water.

Power Outages And Mobile Warming Shelters

But make no mistake, this cold snap is dangerous. In extreme cold like this, frostbite can occur on exposed skin within seconds, and people have been encouraged to stay inside if they can until the weather moderates. Tens of thousands of people were without power in pockets of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, and big cities and small towns opened warming shelters for people who lost power and the homeless, who are especially vulnerable.

The cold is especially hard to take for people who aren’t used to it. Charles Henry, 54, a native of Hawaii who was staying in a shelter in St. Paul, Minnesota, told The Associated Press “that wind chill out there is not even a joke.”

“I feel sorry for anybody that has to stay outside,” he said.

In Chicago, five city buses were turned into warming centers moving around the city to encourage the homeless to come in from the cold. Some had nurses aboard to provide emergency treatment.

American Indian tribes in the Upper Midwest are facing dangerous conditions, too. Chris Fairbanks, energy assistance program manager for the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, said the cold presents “a scary situation” for them because most of the housing is of poor quality.

Death To The Emerald Ash Borer

About the only people cheering the weather are foresters. The U.S. Forest Service said on Facebook that “the bitter cold may act as a speed bump in the spread of one of the most damaging invasive insects in recent times, the emerald ash borer.” The invasive beetle has decimated about 100 million ash trees in urban and natural forests in the United States since it was first discovered in Michigan in 2002.

When the polar vortex dipped down into Minnesota in 2014, forestry scientists at the Northern Research station in Minnesota found that when air temperatures in Minneapolis and St. Paul fell to minus 23 degrees, between 60 to 70 percent of larvae had been killed in most locations.

Polar Vortex Exiting, But Likely To Return

Temperatures Thursday will struggle to get above zero in most of the area plunged into the deep freeze, but the extreme cold is expected to exit later this week. Some areas could see temperature swings of as much as 70 degrees by the weekend with forecast highs in the 50s in many areas of the Midwest.

And though the frigid air will move out of the Midwest, scientists say the polar vortex has wandered south more often in recent years and it could again before winter is over.

Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside of Boston, told The Associated Press the unusual cold could stick around for another eight weeks because of a polar vortex split.

“The impacts from this split, we have a ways to go. It's not the end of the movie yet,” Cohen said. “I think at a minimum, we're looking at mid-February, possibly through mid-March.”

Americans were introduced to the polar vortex five years ago. It was in early January 2014 when temperatures dropped to minus 16 degrees in Chicago and meteorologists, who used the term for decades, started talking about it on social media.

Some scientists — but by no means most — see a connection between human-caused climate change and difference in atmospheric pressure that causes slower moving waves in the air.

"It's a complicated story that involves a hefty dose of chaos and an interplay among multiple influences, so extracting a clear signal of the Arctic's role is challenging," said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Several recent papers have made the case for the connection, she noted.

"This symptom of global warming is counterintuitive for those in the cross-hairs of these extreme cold spells," Francis said in an email. "But these events provide an excellent opportunity to help the public understand some of the 'interesting' ways that climate change will unfold."

Others, like University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado, aren't sold yet on the climate change connection.

Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, who has already felt temperatures that seem like 25 degrees below zero, said there's "a growing body of literature" to support the climate connection. But he says more evidence is needed.

"Either way," Gensini said, "it's going to be interesting being in the bullseye of the Midwest cold."

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Photo: Morning commuters face a tough slog on Wacker Drive in Chicago, Monday, Jan. 28, 2019. (Rich Hein/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)