NEW YORK, Feb. 5, 2007
Big Chill Hits Midwest And Northeast
Four Deaths Blamed On Weather; Trains Canceled, Highways And Schools Closed
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Play CBS Video Video Cold Snap Strikes Eastern U.S. Sub-zero temperatures have closed schools for thousands and shut down railways all along the East Coast. The blistering cold is expected to linger throughout the week. Gwen Belton reports.
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Video Cold Wave Hits The North Freezing winds and sub-zero temperatures struck the Midwest and Northeast, forcing schools and highways to be closed. Forecasters say this weather is unusual for February. Cynthia Bowers reports.
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A commuter braves the elements in Chicago, Feb. 5, 2007. (AP)
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There's a New York City commuter in there ... somewhere, Feb. 5, 2007. (AP)
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Franklin Powell digs out his car where he drove off the road in the snow about a half a mile from the Watertown airport in Dexter, N.Y., Feb 4, 2007. (AP)
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Photo Essay Combating The Cold Arctic chill from northern Plains to New England forces people to bundle up.
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Photos Winter Scenes '06-'07 Images from across the United States.
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Interactive Winter Watch See photos of wet and snowy days across the country, and check out snow accumulations and airport delays.
All four deaths occurred Sunday. In Kentucky, an elderly man wandered away from his home while a motorist whose car slid on ice overturned in a river. State police in Michigan say an eight-year-old girl and her mother were killed in a wreck on an icy road.
Elsewhere, temperatures as low as 38 below zero shut down schools for thousands of youngsters, halted some Amtrak service and put car batteries on the disabled list from the northern Plains across the Great Lakes.
The cold was accompanied by snow that was measured in feet in parts of upstate New York.
"Anybody in their right mind wouldn't want to be out in weather like this," Lawrence Wiley, 57, said at the Drop Inn Center homeless shelter where he has been living in Cincinnati. Monday lows in the area were in the single digits.
With temperatures near zero and a wind chill of 25 below, school districts across Ohio canceled classes. "We have a lot of kids that walk to school. We didn't think it was worth the risk," Sandusky City Schools Superintendent Bill Pahl said.
Learning was stalled at schools in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, where school buses wouldn't start, and it was far too cold to let any child walk to school, reports CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers.
With a temperature of 12 below zero and wind chill of 31 below, Wisconsin's largest school district, Milwaukee Public Schools, also shut down, idling some 90,000 children. In upstate New York 34,000 kids got the day off in Rochester because of near-zero temperatures. Schools also closed in parts of Michigan. Even in Minnesota, where February cold is the norm and people are accustomed to coping, some charter schools closed.
The temperature crashed to 38 below zero Monday morning at Hallock in northwestern Minnesota, and to 30 below at International Falls, the weather service said.
Veterinarian Wade Himes wasn't too concerned as he ate breakfast at the Shorelunch Cafe in International Falls.
"We get up and go to work, and people come and see us. I don't think anything changes that much. (You) just dress warm," said Himes, 69.
Grand Forks, N.D., also registered 30 below.
"For this time of year, this isn't that unusual, as far as temperatures go," said weather service meteorologist Bill Abeling in Bismarck. "To get record temperatures this time of year in North Dakota, you've got to delve down in the 40-below region, so we're not even close."
Hayward, Wis., fell to 27 below on Monday, with a wind chill of minus 36, and wind chills around the state dipped to nearly 40 below.
Overnight, it was 23 below in Duluth, Minn., and one problem that comes with cold weather isn't just cars that won't start, but cars that won't stop.
"We do often have problems with auto theft, because people are stealing cars that are unlocked and unattended when they're warming up in the cold weather," police Sgt. Dan Boese told CBS Radio News.
In western New York, the big problem was snow...piled five feet deep in some places, adds Bowers. Amtrak shut down passenger service in parts of western and northern New York state, and whiteout conditions and slippery pavement shut down a 38-mile stretch of the New York Thruway during the night.
"Roads are treacherous. We have our DPW and our highway departments out, and they can't keep up," said Terry Yarnell, superintendent of the town of Aurora.
"It's coming down too quick, they just can't keep up with it," agreed Steve Slawinski, assistant police chief of Evans, N.Y. "If you go out, you're just going to go in a ditch or get in an accident."
New York City was registering wind chills of minus 8 to minus 11 Monday morning.
With wind chills around 30 below, Chicago emergency room doctor Sean Motzny said he was somewhat relieved the Bears lost the Super Bowl, because it meant fans weren't out celebrating and exposing themselves to frostbite and hypothermia.
"This can come on very quickly," Motzny told Regine Schlesinger of CBS Radio station WBBM (audio).
Cold made all the more cruel when you consider that just a month ago in Chicago, golfers were teeing off in temperatures near 60, reports Bowers. Today the high was one degree.
At least 30 water main breaks were blamed on the cold in Detroit, city Water and Sewerage Department spokesman George Ellenwood told The Detroit News.
The cold also brought calls for help from car owners faced with dead batteries and frozen locks.
"During the weekend, 10,000 motorists called for assistance. And that's a record in recent years," Nancy Cain, spokeswoman for AAA Michigan, said Monday. "This morning we've already had 300 calls for help."
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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However, this basic law of science (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) reveals the exact opposite. In the long run, complex, ordered arrangements actually tend to become simpler and more disorderly with time. There is an irreversible downward trend ultimately at work throughout the universe. Evolution, with its ever increasing order and complexity, appears impossible in the natural world.
I find it hard to believe that something can be made out of nothing...no gases, no air, no chemicals, no sun, no power, not water, just nothing and then nothing exploded...hmmm..
Physicist Lord Kelvin stated it technically as follows: It is well known that, left to themselves, chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials; they do not ultimately become more complex. Outside forces can increase order for a time (through the expenditure of relatively large amounts of energy, and through the input of design). However, such reversal cannot last forever. Once the force is released, processes return to their natural direction - greater disorder. Their energy is transformed into lower levels of availability for further work. The natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time.
You say that Genetics have proven that humans and animals share the SAME genetic material, the sameness is over 95%.
I have not read and cant find anything to back what you say here. There is bound to be a bit of similarity but to believe that we all came from nothing does not compute with me.. first of all there was nothing out there and then over billions of years nothing turned into viruses, dinosaurs, whales, trees, planktons, etc... I have always believed that nothing produces nothing...
Bilbooreilly, I do however think that there is no need to put others down for their difference in thinking to us, if a person thinks differently it doesnt make them brainless, or a fool. Who is to say that we are right..you and I both believe we are but one day we might find we are wrong and then we will look real fools by having put down the ideas of others... others thoughts and ideas are one way of learning..
I would love to know if the weather is normal for this time of year or is it below normal...
Here in OZ we had snow in Melborne at Christmas time, hey this is the middle of our summer and we had snow, we never get snow in summer in Melborne, it's normally about 40 celcus...and stinken hot...
yep global warming is sure working here as well eh...
Face it you morons don't have a clue, you're just as brainwashed as the religious kooks. NOBODY KNOWS HOW WE GOT HERE... they should ban you idiots from letting you act like you know in school textbooks... go watch star trek you freakin moron.
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has anyone here seen "2001 a space oddesy"
bildooreilly
that show makde a good theory.
the begining of the humans was the first monkey smart enough to pick up a stick (or a bone) and fight other animals with it and with generation after generation they used things in nature more and more.
as for the diversity of life we have on earth. The earth has had life for billions of years and have you ever heard of mutations???
Posted by anopinion1 at 04:02 PM : Feb 05, 2007
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Scientists have completed a rough sketch of the canine genome. The results may explain why dogs are humans' best friend: Their genes are similar.
National geographic
Take dogs for example, selective breeding has produced in a short time the Great Dane and the Chihuahua and neither one resembles the other but both are canines descended from WOLVES.
Look up neotony and the 20 year Silver Fox experiment that made a wild foxe line into barking dogs who wagged their tails and greeted humans like dogs, it also changed their breeding cycle.
Wolves, dogs and coyotes can interbreed and produce oddities, one is a change in their breeding seasns times and another is changing from once a year to twice a year cycles.
Posted by newster1 at 09:08 PM : Feb 05, 2007
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So where is all this global warming these left-wingers have been promising us.
I'm looking forward to lower heating bills in the winter.
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Think in terms of MILLIONS of years not in human terms of this year next or ten years ago. Genetics have proven that humans and animals share the SAME genetic material, the sameness is over 95%
Scientists have completed a rough sketch of the canine genome. The results may explain why dogs are humans' best friend: Their genes are similar.
National geographic
Take dogs for example, selective breeding has produced in a short time the Great Dane and the Chihuahua and neither one resembles the other but both are canines descended from WOLVES.
Look up neotony and the 20 year Silver Fox experiment that made a wild foxe line into barking dogs who wagged their tails and greeted humans like dogs, it also changed their breeding cycle.
Wolves, dogs and coyotes can interbreed and produce oddities, one is a change in their breeding seasns times and another is changing from once a year to twice a year cycles.
bildooreilly
that show makde a good theory.
the begining of the humans was the first monkey smart enough to pick up a stick (or a bone) and fight other animals with it and with generation after generation they used things in nature more and more.
as for the diversity of life we have on earth. The earth has had life for billions of years and have you ever heard of mutations???
I don't hate science, I hate junk science. Take the big bang theory for instance, I just can't buy it... The big bang theory is that 450 million years ago (Long Ago & Far Away) a dot smaller than a period . on this webpage superimploded and created our entire universe, that's right every planet, star, spec of dust in the universe came from a dot smaller than a period on this page.
Sorry but I can't buy that either, seems to me a lot of science lately has been turned into faith based BS just like the religious kooks. Or evolution, I don't buy the "Creationists" story, or the "Evolutionists" story. Fact is neither one have a clue, and nobody really knows. There's no evidence of two animals say 2 horses mating and having a baby pig, sure it might look a little bit different from its parents but it's still a baby horse. Fact is all of a sudden thousands of years ago civilized thinking man appeared out of nowhere, and nobody can explain it.
So come on tout out some of your junk science, like the 6 degree increase in temperatures over the next 100 years when they can't even predict the weather for next week. What a hoot... and some of you fools eat this garbage up, what a bunch of cowardly non thinking idiots. Like PT Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute, and he wasn't lyin....
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