Year's End Brings Bitter Cold To Midwest And Northeast

NEW YORK, NY — As residents of the Northeast and Midwest welcomed a white Christmas, frightful weather was just a round the corner. The bitter cold that followed the appropriately timed blizzard is expected to last until the New Year.

National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley says to expect colder-than-normal temperatures the rest of the week for much of the Midwest and Northeast. Frigid arctic air and dangerously cold wind chills will pose a real danger as the year comes to a close.

Wind chill advisories or warnings are in effect for all of North Dakota and Wisconsin, as well as swaths of South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan and Indiana. In Chicago, temperatures hovered around zero degrees on Tuesday.

Wind chill advisories are also in effect for parts of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York. Meteorologists say frostbite is possible with as little as 30 minutes of exposure.

The white Christmas itself was unusually widespread. Even the usually rainy Pacific Northwest got the white stuff. The National Weather Service says it's only the sixth time since 1884 that downtown Portland had measurable snow — only an inch or two — on a Dec. 25.

One of the few open was The Tobacconist cigar shop in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, where area-resident Dwayne Doherty said he welcomed the fresh blanket of Christmas snow.

"I'm actually happy," he said, chuckling as he made his way to his pick-up. "We haven't had snow on Christmas at all in the last few years. It's actually perfect."

Minnesota was experiencing its most frigid Christmas Day since 1996, with wind chills as cold as 35 degrees below zero, KSTP-TV reported. The National Weather Service warned that those whose skin was exposed in such conditions could get frostbite in as little as 15 minutes.

Snow amounts in the Midwest were not large for this time of year. A storm system that swept from Nebraska through Iowa dropped around 2 inches of snow on Chicago, the weather service said. That was just enough to provide a picturesque backdrop for those gathering for Christmas dinners in the Chicago area. But it wasn't enough to cause havoc either on roadway or airport runaways.

The nation's third largest city had comparatively little snow for the season until the weekend — just over 2 inches in all, the National Weather Service said.

In addition to slowing travel in New England, the storm was responsible for some power outages. Eversource reported more than 20,000 customers in eastern Massachusetts without electricity, the bulk on Cape Cod which was feeling the brunt of strong winds.

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