Bitter Cold Settles in for Long Northeast Stay

B O S T O N, Jan. 22 -- It's been colder in Boston than Anchorage, Alaska.

In fact, all of the Northeast and the upper Midwest was plunged into an arctic-like deep freeze Tuesday. Boston struggled to reach 20 degrees, and with the wind it felt like 20 to 30 degrees below zero. The normal high for January is in the 30s.

Volunteers from the Pine St. Inn, a homeless shelter, scoured the streets overnight, trying to persuade some of the hardcore homeless to come in from the bitter cold. This time, it didn't take much persuading. The shelter filled its 300 beds and placed hundreds more on mats in hallways.

Many public schools kept children inside for recess.

"My primary concern is for children who have asthma," said Suzanne Wilcox, principal of Eliot Elementary School in the Boston suburb of Needham. "It's cold. They don't want to come out and stand around in the cold."

A group of 11-year-olds playing in the warmth of their classroom agreed.

"I'd rather be inside," she said. "It's cold."

Risk of Frostbite, Hypothermia

Medical experts say a person exposed to this kind of bitter cold for even half-an-hour is at serious risk of frostbite in their hands and toes, or, even worse, hypothermia, which occurs when the body's core begins to lose heat. Hypothermia can kill.

"As you get colder, your judgement and your alertness ... decrease, so people can start to have hypothermia and they don't know it because their judgement has been affected," said Dr. Paul Biddinger, an emergency room physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The extreme cold is attributed to frigid air flowing down from the Arctic Ocean and northern Canada, pulled down into the eastern United States by an usual trough in the jet stream.

As a consequence, there were temperatures well below normal in even normally-chilly locales such as Duluth, Minn., Chicago and Detroit. Single digit temperatures were recorded throughout New England, though only a small swath of central New York State, which includes Syracuse, received any significant snowfall.