Polar Vortex Leaves No State Unfrozen, Including Florida And Its State University's Fountain
ByAfter all fifty states achieved temperatures below freezing on Tuesday, the weather started its climb back to more reasonable levels on Wednesday, FOX News reported.
The "polar vortex" was blamed for at least 21 deaths, from causing shovellers to collapse, to freezing homeless people, to inducing fatal accidents, according to FOX. Many states lost power because of freezing temperatures.
Even in tropical Hawaii, temperatures made it to 18 degrees. States like North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina closed school on Monday, Tuesday, and a few areas even had delayed openings on Wednesday. At Florida State's campus, a fountain froze over -- and not because the Seminoles won the BCS title on Monday.
"I didn't think the South got this cold," a homeless man, previously from Chicago, who found shelter in a church in Atlanta told FOX. "That was the main reason for me to come down from up North, from the cold, to get away from all that stuff."
Beginning in the Midwest, the arctic air quickly made its way to the northeast. Places like Indiana, Illinois, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and upstate New York experienced temperatures in the double digits below zero with wind chills in the negative 40s and 50s. Central Park broke a temperature low set in 1896, or the official year of the first Olympics.
As a result, natural gas levels were high. In fact, they were at an all time high for the United States, according to Jack Weixel, director of energy analysis at Bentek Energy.
Countrywide images of icicled eyelids, frozen cars, a frozen Lake Michigan, a sleeveless Colin Caepernick, and the frozen Seminole fountain perpetuated the news over the last few days. Wednesday marks a return to more normal conditions, and more normal images... weather images, that is.