The Associated Press: Blowing snow and frigid temperatures pound nation

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Arctic air extended its grip Wednesday with below-zero temperatures stretching from Montana to northern New England and frost nipping the Gulf Coast.

A few ski areas in Vermont and northern Minnesota closed for the day because of the cold — 38 below zero at International Falls, with the wind chill during the night estimated at 50 below.

The temperature at Bolton, Vt., was 10 below zero and operators of the Bolton Valley ski resort feared that skiers could freeze if a lift malfunctioned, said spokesman Josh Arneson. "Getting people off a lift can take time," he said.

Potentially lethal cold expected

JANESVILLE — The worst thing about the severe cold over the next two days is that it could kill or maim you.

A secondary worry is that streets might be treacherous because salt won't work in these temperatures.

With a forecast of 18 below zero tonight in Janesville and 21 below Thursday night, the city of Janesville decided it would be too cold even for ice skating. The city has closed the outdoor rink at Traxler Park until Friday at the earliest.

Maybe not -78F, but very cold in Alaska

THE COLDEST READING SO FAR THIS WINTER WAS 68 BELOW AT CHICKEN ON JANUARY 8TH.

To Build a Fire, by Jack London

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.