Some parts of North America are cold right now. Really cold. Like, window-cracking cold. According to Mashable, Canadian residents are reporting incidents of shattered windows due to the freezing temperatures. Shattered. Windows. “I've been in some cold weather, but never cold enough to crack my window,” an Ontario resident tweeted, posting an image of her cracked window. “Sounded like a gunshot.”
CTV News pointed out that the weather in some parts of Canada is so cold, they’re actually colder than some parts of Mars and Antarctica, by comparison. The brutal wind chill factor in Canada places the actual temperature much closer to 40 degrees below zero. Authorities have canceled outdoor ice skating in the coldest areas of America’s neighbors to the north.
Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the Midwest and Northeast are also being slammed by cold winds and frigid temps. Wind chill fell to a mind-boggling 33 degrees below zero in Watertown, New York Thursday morning, just one degree shy of being the coldest place in the nation.
Mount Washington in New Hampshire clocked in at 34 degrees below zero. But will the cold streak last? "The current cold air outbreak is pretty intense and maybe even more impressive is its durability," Director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research Judah Cohen told Mashable in an email. "So, a moderation seems inevitable regardless of the behavior of the polar vortex. So far, I don’t see a clear sign of the strong polar vortex coupling all the way to the surface, but if it did, then we could experience an extended period of mild weather in the Eastern U.S."
