The UK may have seen its first flurries of snow in recent days, but the US city of Chicago has been experiencing Arctic levels of cold as the Polar Vortex takes hold.
People from the city on the shores of Lake Michigan have been posting their footage to social media and rebranding their home #Chiberia as temperatures dropped to -28 degrees Celsius, the coldest in the city on record.
One man posted a video to Twitter showing what appeared to be ice and snow inside his home.
“Just took a shower and the steam froze around where the leaks are in my front door,” he said.
Chilly morning in #Chicago #PolarVortex pic.twitter.com/RZjz0sCFe8
— Mark Powell (@FrGoose13) January 30, 2019
Elsewhere, one man woke up to find that his door knob had frozen inside his house.
Insane👀👀👀👀 @weatherchannel @accuweather #winterstormjayden #windchillwarning #albertaclipper #Chiberia pic.twitter.com/lXwFBTrrem
— Nicholas William Walcott (@big6live) January 30, 2019
Another man showed a t-shirt frozen solid and “stiff as a board” after hanging it outside on the railings of a balcony.
It’s a little cold in #Chiberia @barstoolWSD @barstoolcarl @RedLineRadio pic.twitter.com/jzhVQQnLAz
— Terry Greenbeans (@TerryGreenbeans) January 30, 2019
In nearby Toledo, temperatures had dropped so low that a cup of coffee thrown into the air appeared to turn to snow as it evaporated into a vapour and then condensed into a cloud almost instantaneously.
And a police force in Warrensburg, Missouri, near Kansas City, asked residents to “keep the criminalling to a minimum” while the cold lasted.
So…we are asking a favor (at least for the next three days); can you keep the criminalling to a minimum? It is REALLY…Posted by Warrensburg Police Department on Monday, January 28, 2019
Earlier in the week, a mother caught her son cleaning up the snow near their home in Michigan while wearing a dinosaur costume and posted the footage to Twitter.
I told my kid to shovel the snow. I checked my video cam to make sure he was doing it. This is what I see. #michigansnow pic.twitter.com/LR46ZEGFHj
— BeeMoQ (@mommymadonna) January 28, 2019
The Nasa Earth Twitter account explained the dramatic cold weather was caused by the Polar Vortex, which usually “swirls around the Arctic”.
“Recently, this pressure system has been less stable, spilling colder air south & bringing record-low temperatures to parts of the continental US,” their tweet continued.
Normally, the #PolarVortex 🌀 swirls around the Arctic, trapping cold air near the Pole. Recently, this pressure system has been less stable, spilling colder air south & bringing record-low temperatures 🌡 to parts of the continental U.S. https://t.co/PS83gEo5u0 pic.twitter.com/zQP4sYS2Kh
— NASA Earth (@NASAEarth) January 30, 2019