COLUMBUS – Wind chill readings plunged to more than 30-below, schools closed and mail service was halted Wednesday but forecasters predicted winter would relax its icy grip on central Ohio in time for the nation’s groundhogs to emerge from their burrows Saturday to predict when spring would arrive.
A Wind Chill Warning has been posted for 4:00 p.m. Tuesday until 1:00 p.m. Thursday for Franklin, Delaware, Union, Madison and Licking counties with dangerously cold wind chills as low as 40 below zero expected.
The wind chill at John Glenn Columbus International Airport fell to as low as 31 degrees below zero at 11:45 a.m., for only the third time in 35 years, but forecasts called for the possibility of warmer readings Thursday (see above).
The minus-42 degrees at Brookville in Montgomery County was the coldest wind chill reported in Ohio Wednesday.
Hundreds of school districts across Ohio, including the Columbus City Schools and the South Western City Schools, canceled classes for a second day Thursday.
Check on school and business closings and delays here
Ohio State’s Columbus campus will reopen Thursday morning but classes are canceled until 11:00 a.m.
Columbus State Community College, the University of Toledo, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Akron and Bowling Green State and Youngstown State universities were among those canceling classes for a second day Thursday.
Winter will not quite call it a week just because less-frigid temperatures arrive. Another weather system will bring snow to central Ohio Thursday night and Friday morning (see above).
The U.S. Postal Service suspended delivery in parts of nine states on Wednesday, including the following 3-digit ZIP Code prefixes in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Lima: 452, 430-432, 441, 458. The suspension also included picking up mail from businesses and collection boxes, and picking up packages from residences and business.
Toledo’s mayor says all non-essential city offices will be closed through Thursday. Courthouses, libraries and many county agencies in Toledo also will be shut down until Friday.
Temperatures in parts of the frigid Midwest are beating those in even the world’s coldest places.
The National Weather Service shows the temperature in Fargo, North Dakota, dropped Wednesday to negative 31 degrees, while in Antarctica, the balmy forecast at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was negative 25 degrees. That’s also warmer than Minneapolis, where temperatures plunged to negative 27 d degrees.
More than 1,600 flights were canceled at Chicago’s airports.
At least eight deaths were linked to the system.
The unusually frigid weather is attributed to a sudden warming far above the North Pole. A blast of warm air from misplaced Moroccan heat last month made the normally super chilly air temperatures above the North Pole rapidly increase. That split the polar vortex into pieces, which then started to wander, said Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research.