Extreme Midwest cold follows storm that barreled across Great Lakes and Northeast

Now comes even more frigid weather in the U.S. Midwest.

Extreme cold with near-zero degree wind chills descended upon parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin, forecasters said Tuesday, even as utilities worked to restore power to thousands of customers after heavy snow and strong winds pummeled parts of the Midwest, Great Lakes and the Northeast this week.

The cold front follows a system that barreled across the Midwest and parts of the Great Lakes with sharply colder air, strong winds and a mix of snow, ice and rain, leading to treacherous travel. Forecasters said it intensified quickly enough to meet the criteria of a bomb cyclone, a system that strengthens rapidly as pressure drops.

Nick Korstad, who lives in the Big Bay Point Lighthouse on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Lake Superior, called the storm the strongest he has seen since he moved there in 2018, with gusts up to 75 mph (121 kph) rattling the house as waves pounded the cliffs below. The storm knocked out power for about 40 hours, darkening the lighthouse beacon and forcing him to rely on oil lamps and fireplaces, he said Tuesday.

“When winds reach this magnitude, the entire house rumbles, the windows flex and you can feel the pounding of the waves against the sandstone cliff,” Korstad said Tuesday.

Daytime highs Tuesday across Wisconsin’s forested Northwoods region will hover in the mid-teens, but come nightfall will drop into the single digits and could get as low as minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius), according to Cameron Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wisconsin.

“It will be colder Wednesday night as a cold front drops through,” Miller said. “On New Year’s Eve wind chills could be down to the negative 20-25 degree (minus 29-minus 32 degrees Celsius) range there.”

Nationwide, around 97,000 customers were without power Tuesday, around a third of them in Michigan, according to Poweroutage.us.

Frigid air trailing the storm will spread across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country, the weather service said, powering the lake-effect “snow machine” in areas downwind of the Great Lakes.

Some areas in western and upstate New York saw a foot or more of snow Monday and their totals could reach up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) this week, forecasters said. Strong winds on Monday knocked down trees and power lines across the region.

Video posted on social media showed people struggling to walk in the wind. A waterway in downtown Buffalo, New York, was clogged with debris left by a windblown surge of water from Lake Erie.

Just south of Buffalo in Lackawanna, Diane Miller was caught on video being blown off the front steps of her daughter’s house and landing in some bushes. She wasn’t seriously hurt.

“I opened her door and the wind caught me, and I went flying,” Miller told WKBW-TV.

Temperatures across parts of the Great Lakes and the Northeast will be below normal heading into New Year’s Day, said weather service meteorologist Andrew Orrison. Whiteout conditions were possible in some areas, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned people in impacted areas to avoid unnecessary travel.

On the West Coast, strong Santa Ana winds with isolated gusts topping 70 mph (112 kph) brought down trees in parts of Southern California where recent storms had saturated the soil. Extreme winds hampered an air rescue attempt on Monday in mountains east of Los Angeles where three hikers were found dead. Wind advisories had expired by Tuesday, but blustery conditions were expected through Saturday, along with thunderstorms.

Rain on New Year’s Day could potentially soak the Rose Parade in Pasadena for the first time in about two decades.

Cold is the norm this time of year in Alaska — but it’s been “unusually cold for unusually long for December” in Fairbanks, said weather service meteorologist Jacob Troyke. Temperature readings late this month have plunged as low as minus 48 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 44.4 degrees Celsius). Some Fairbanks residents had a bit of fun, posing in swimsuits beside a sign at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Road crews have struggled this month to keep up with the snow in Juneau, Alaska’s capital. The city shattered a December monthly snowfall record of 54.7 inches (1.4 meters) set at its airport in 1964, receiving more than 63 inches (1.6 meters) so far.

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Associated Press writers Corey Williams in Detroit; Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia; Chris Weber in Los Angeles; and Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.