© APShards: Sunlight streams through the windows of a building which caught on fire in Plattsmouth, Neb., Friday, Jan. 3, 2014, and the water sprayed on it by fire fighters froze
Experts have warned that Friday's freezing temperatures were simply a warm-up and that this weekend will bring a big chill for 140 million people - almost half the nation - that could prove fatal for the unprepared - and will continue through the winter.
With the Northeast still reeling from the huge storm that dumped as much as two-feet of snow across the region and was responsible for the deaths of 13 people, a new weather system is threatening to bring record low temperatures to the Midwest as a polar vortex barrels over the United States.
'It's the mother lode of cold air,' said Weather Channel coordinating meteorologist Tom Moore. 'On the heels of what will be the coldest air of the season, will be dangerous, life-threatening winds.'
The temperature predictions are startling: 25 below zero in Fargo, North Dakota, minus 31 in International Falls, Minnesota, and 15 below in Indianapolis and Chicago.
Moore said that as the freakishly cold weather hits the region, authorities need to act fast to avoid a human catastrophe because of the chill. 'Anybody living out on the streets needs to be rounded up and put into a shelter,' said Moore to MSNBC News. 'The repercussions for not could be deadly, and I'm afraid we're going to see cases like that.'
The temperature predictions are startling: 25 below zero in Fargo, North Dakota, minus 31 in International Falls, Minnesota, and 15 below in Indianapolis and Chicago. The so-called 'polar vortex' will send cold air piled up at the North Pole down to the U.S., funneling it as far south as the Gulf Coast.
Weather expert Andrew Freeman of Climate Central explains that the rarity is 'an area of cold low pressure that typically circulates around the Arctic during the winter, spreading tentacles of cold southward into Europe, Asia, and North America at times. Except this time, it's not a small section of the vortex'.
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