(Reuters) – On Saturday, the northeastern United States was hit by record-breaking cold temperatures and strong winds, which made the weather dangerous and led to the death of an infant in Massachusetts.
Mount Washington in New Hampshire recorded a wind chill of minus 108 degrees Fahrenheit (-78 degrees Celsius) last night, which seemed to be the lowest temperature ever recorded in the United States. According to the Mount Washington Observatory, the air temperature at the peak was -47 degrees Fahrenheit (-44 degrees Celsius), and winds gusted to around 100 miles per hour (160 kilometres per hour).
The Hampden district attorney said in a statement that high winds caused a tree to fall on a car in Southwick, Massachusetts. The car was crushed, killing an infant passenger. The driver had serious injuries and had to be taken to a hospital.
The National Weather Service (NWS) said that the low temperature in Boston on Friday, when public schools were closed because of the impending freeze, was -10 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 degrees Celsius). This broke the record for the day, which had been set more than a century ago. In Providence, Rhode Island, the temperature dropped to minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 degrees Celsius), which is much colder than the previous record low of minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit (-19 degrees Celsius), which was set in 1918.
The NWS said that record low temperatures were set in places like Albany, New York, Augusta, Maine, Rochester, New York, and Worcester, Massachusetts, where the arctic blast came in from eastern Canada.
The NWS office in Caribou, Maine, said it had heard reports of “frostquakes,” which feel like earthquakes but are actually caused by the soil cracking suddenly in the cold, as well as trees splitting open, probably because the sap inside the trunks had frozen.
Several cities took emergency steps to help their residents, like opening warming centres and making sure homeless people had a place to stay out of the bitter cold.
A spokeswoman for Pine Street Inn, which helps the most homeless people in New England, said that on Friday and Saturday, they sent twice as many vans through the streets of Boston.
She said, “They started warning people early this week that the weather was going to be very bad.” “Last night, the only goal was to keep people safe and alive.”
Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts told South Station, which is the city’s main train station, to stay open all night as an emergency shelter. Trevisan thinks that about 50 to 60 homeless people slept in the station for the night.
Due to the cold, many ski areas had to cut back on their hours. Jay Peak is a ski mountain in northern Vermont near the Canadian border. On Friday and Saturday, the whole mountain was closed because the staff and skiers were in danger.
The cold weather was only expected to last a few days. On Sunday, temperatures were expected to be much higher. The NWS said that on Sunday, the high in Boston will be around 47 degrees F (8.3 C).
