Already on Monday, the misery was on full display. In Chicago, where an overnight snow covered the streets and snarled the commute to work, cars spun their tires at major intersections and could be seen struggling to move at all on side streets. Even some dogs donned boots. In Milwaukee, St. Paul and Minneapolis, public schools called off classes. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan sent most state workers home early. By midday, more than 1,400 flights across the country had been canceled, according to FlightAware.
“We are getting a lot of snow in very little time,” Mayor Andy Schor of Lansing, Michigan, said in a statement Monday as he declared a snow emergency. “People need to stay off of the streets so that we can clear them properly.”
The snow was expected to push east later on Monday, but the danger in the Midwest was only expected to grow as temperatures plunged dozens of degrees. In northern Indiana, the University of Notre Dame announced that it was closing because of the cold. In Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers declared a state of emergency and told the National Guard to be ready to assist.
Forecasters expect Wednesday’s high temperature (yes, the high) to be minus 14 in both Chicago and Minneapolis, with wind chills as low as minus 50 in Chicago and minus 60 in Minneapolis. If the forecast holds, it would be Chicago’s lowest daily high temperature on record. The low of minus 22 was expected to approach, though not surpass, the coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago.
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The vortex, a brutal mass of cold air with strong bands of circulating winds, left its normal location near the North Pole and spread southward in recent weeks, bringing arctic weather to the middle of the United States.
“This is what you would expect when you get into central and northern Canada,” said Brian Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
Hurley said the worst of the polar vortex was expected to extend from northern Illinois and Wisconsin, west through Minnesota, Iowa and the eastern part of the Dakotas, settling in late Tuesday and lasting into Thursday. All of those states are well acquainted with harsh winters, but many of them have not seen weather this cold since 1994, Hurley said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.