Record Cold Halts Some Planes, Trains

The record cold across the Midwest contributed to the cancellation of thousands of flights and stopped some trains in Chicago, Bloomberg News reported.

More than 4,000 U.S. flights were canceled Monday, and Amtrak stopped service in and out of Chicago and reduced service from New York to Boston. Sections of interstates 65 and 84/94 in Indiana were closed, Bloomberg reported.

“It is a pretty ferocious air mass coming down,” Tom Kines, meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., told Bloomberg. “Across the upper Midwest it stayed below zero, and will stay below zero, and that air is coming eastward.”

Monday’s low in Chicago reached a record minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit, beating minus 14 set in 1884 and 1988, according to the National Weather Service.

“By Wednesday morning, a lot of your big cities will be in single digits, and during the day Wednesday we start to come out of it,” James Aman, senior meteorologist with Earth Networks Inc., told Bloomberg.

“Things will be much more tolerable by Wednesday afternoon, and we see some continued warming by Thursday,” he said.