This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

As cold-weather records continued to fall across the eastern US, under the influence of the polar vortex, the human toll mounted. By Thursday in Tennessee, one of the states hardest hit, 11 people had died because of subzero temperatures.

Polar vortex to bring coldest weather in decades to the US Read more

As the polar vortex brought high-pressured arctic air down over the country overnight from Thursday to Friday, frigid temperatures spread across the deep south and north-east into already snow-locked New England.

While the west coast, Great Basin and south-west are warm and sunny, a trough created over the eastern half of the US is expected to continue dragging cold from the arctic through Friday.

According to Tennessee emergency management, five people died of hypothermia-related conditions in the state and six more died in motor vehicle accidents or from an inability to reach medical care, stemming from the continued icy conditions on the southern state’s roads.

“There were widespread subzero overnight lows Thursday night extending from Illinois to western Virginia, and numerous record lows were set,” the National Weather Service said in a Friday morning statement. A full accounting of the records set is likely to be released on Saturday.

Some lows, however, shattered records which had stood since the mid-20th century.

Newark Liberty airport reported a low of just 1F (-17C), breaking the record low of 5F (-15C) set in 1936, according to the Associated Press. With wind chills, the temperature would have felt like between -10F (-23C) and -20F (-29C). In New York City’s Central Park, the low hit 2F (-16.5C), breaking a record of 7F (-14C) from 1950. In upstate New York, much of Niagara Falls was frozen over.

Temperatures in huge swaths of the country, from the north-east to the Ohio Valley to the mid-Atlantic states, will “struggle to get out of the teens” on Friday, according to the NWS.

Niagara Falls frozen over as polar vortex drops temperatures – pictures Read more

The bone-chilling temperatures closed or delayed school openings in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York. Some schools in the deep south are still closed after cancellations earlier in the week. In Tennessee, up to 0.75in of freezing rain canceled schools in some parts of the state for the rest of the week after Tuesday.

Forecasters are predicting that another storm system will move across the deep south and then east.

The storm could be a mixed blessing. Temperatures are expected to moderate toward the February average, but they will be accompanied by wet weather, including sleet and freezing rain west from Missouri and east through northern Georgia. The storm is expected to bring rain to the east coast by the weekend.

Despite the frosty temperatures in the eastern US, meanwhile, meteorologists found that 2015 was the second warmest January on record globally.