Dangerous cold continues across much of the US, closing schools and grounding flights

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Dangerously cold winds continued across much of the Rockies, Great Plains and Midwest on Tuesday, with lows as low as minus 30 degrees (minus 34.4 degrees Celsius) in many parts of the Central United States.

About 110,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power late Monday after widespread outages that began Saturday, most of them in Oregon. Portland General Electric warned that restoration efforts could be delayed due to the threat of heavy rain Tuesday. Transportation officials urged residents to avoid travel because roads were expected to be dangerously packed with ice that could weigh down trees and power lines, causing them to fall.

Classes were canceled Tuesday for students in the nation’s fourth-largest public school districts — Denver, Dallas and Fort Worth — along with other major cities including Portland and Chicago.

The storm and extremely cold temperatures were affecting everything from air travel to NFL playoff games to the Iowa presidential caucuses, and were also the cause of several deaths across the country.

At least four people died in the Portland area, including two from suspected hypothermia. Another man died after a tree fell on his home and a woman died in a fire spread by an open-flame stove after a tree fell on her RV.

In Wisconsin, the deaths of three homeless people in the Milwaukee area are being investigated as a possible cause of hypothermia, officials said.

Freezing rain and sleet are expected to continue across parts of the Southeast through Tuesday morning. Winter storm warnings were in effect for Lawrence, Limestone and Madison counties in Alabama and Franklin County in Tennessee, southeast Arkansas, northeastern Louisiana, and much of northern, central and southwestern Mississippi.

Temperatures dropped as low as 10 degrees (minus 12.2 Celsius) in Olive Branch, Mississippi and Jackson, Tennessee on Monday night.

Cold temperatures in the Northeast didn’t stop fans from heading out to cheer on the Buffalo Bills at snow-covered Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York. The Bills beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC wild-card playoff game on Monday, which was delayed 27 1/2 hours due to a storm that dumped more than 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow on the area.

And voters gave former President Donald Trump a victory Monday night in the nation’s coldest first Iowa caucus on record. The temperature in Des Moines dropped to minus 3 degrees (minus 19.4 degrees), making it quite cold due to wind chill.