HYANNIS – The latest blast of Arctic air will put a grip on Cape Cod & the Islands Wednesday night into Thursday.
Temperatures are expected to plummet into the single digits in the overnight hours and only recover into the teens on Thursday.
And that cold could be preceded by a quick blast of snow from a lines of squalls expected to move through the area in the late afternoon and early evening hours.
According to the National Weather Service, scattered to numerous snow squalls will cross eastern Massachusetts between 5 and 7 pm this evening.
Brief very heavy snow, near white-out conditions and strong to perhaps damaging wind gusts are anticipated.
Wind chills Wednesday night into Thursday are expected to drop well below zero.
The mercury will recover slightly on Friday into the mid-20’s.
And if you think it’s going to be cold here in New England – be glad you’re not in the Midwest.
The deadly arctic deep freeze there triggered widespread closures of schools and businesses.
It also prompted the U.S. Postal Service to take the rare step of suspending mail delivery to a wide swath of the region.
Many normal activities shut down and residents huddled inside as the National Weather Service forecast plunging temperatures from one of the coldest air masses in years.
Officials throughout the region were focused on protecting vulnerable people from the cold, including the homeless, seniors and those living in substandard housing.
Some buses were turned into mobile warming shelters to help the homeless in Chicago, where temperatures plunged to minus 19 degrees early Wednesday, breaking the previous record low for the day set in 1966.
The bitter cold is the result of a split in the polar vortex that allowed temperatures to plunge much further south than normal.
Governors in Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan declared emergencies as the worst of the cold threatened on Wednesday. In Chicago, major attractions closed because of the bitter cold, including the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Art Institute and the Field Museum.
A wind chill of minus 25 can freeze skin within 15 minutes, according to the National Weather Service.
At least four deaths were linked to the weather system Tuesday, including a man struck and killed by a snow plow in the Chicago area, a young couple whose SUV struck another on a snowy road in northern Indiana and a Milwaukee man found frozen to death in a garage.
About CapeCod.com NewsCenter
