Brrrrrrrrrr

My friend Mordy wouldn’t walk the block from his Chicago apartment to his favorite Starbucks to feed his impressive caffeine addiction this morning. It’s that cold. His region, along with a huge and growing swath of the U.S., is not expected to top zero degrees today. The North Pole has sent a polar vortex across much of the Midwest where weather forecasters have been left to compare local temperatures to those on Mars. The weather pattern — which is creating some of the coldest weather in decades — is now moving east. If you’re in New York, you could see a sixty degree temperature drop in the next day.

+ How cold is it? Schools were closed in Minnesota due to weather for the first time in seventeen years.

+ The question of the day: How is wind chill calculated? In California, it’s measured by the number of people who find it necessary to change from regular shorts into Bermuda shorts.

+ Update: Mordy went to Starbucks and returned with this report: “My skin hurt. My eyes were tearing up. i coughed when I breathed in. And my body was saying ‘make it stop, make it stop.’ I dont think I’ve been in a situation before where my body was screaming this is wrong, get the hell out (a weather situation, I should say).”