U.S braces itself for coldest month of the century with yet another Arctic blast as fears grow for Super Bowl Sunday



Meteorologists are forecasting yet another snow storm for the East Coast, which will arrive on Monday

First Super Bowl to be held in open-air stadium set to be hit by freezing cold

Teams on high alert game in New Jersey on February 2 could be postponed



The Midwest will be hit with a blast as well between Friday and Saturday, which may cause dangerous roads and flight cancellations

Yet another storm is expected to follow the storm scheduled for Monday and is set to hit just one or two days before the Super Bowl on February 2

The championship game will be held in East Rutherford, New Jersey where workers shoveled snow all day after Tuesday's unexpected whiteout



America is set for the coldest month of the century as weather forecasters predict yet another freezing blast of Arctic air - putting Super Bowl Sunday in jeopardy.

Teams have been warned to stay on high alert for changes to the scheduling of the first Super Bowl to be played in an open-air stadium.



Temperatures have already hit record lows, at times making parts of the U.S. colder than the North Pole, and are expected to plunge in the coming days.



Scroll down for video

Keeping out the cold: Wesley Hoague protects himself from the cold with a pair of goggles as he heads to class at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) in Milwaukee More snow? The next storm will hit the Ohio Valley Sunday night before making its way to the Mid-Atlantic region by Monday The timing could not be worse for one of the biggest global sporting events, which will be exposed to the full force of the elements at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on February 2.

Eric Grubman, NFL vice president of business operations, told the Denver Post: 'We are advising teams to prepare in case a contingency plan goes into effect.' RELATED ARTICLES Previous

1

Next Mapping the red planet: Incredible photos chart ten years of... Welcome to RIP - New York's Rat Information Portal that... Share this article Share The game could be moved to the preceding Friday or Saturday or the following Monday if authorities decide the weather will constitute a danger to public health. Broncos coach John Fox and Seattle coach Pete Carroll will be the first to know if the event is rescheduled.

Frozen over: Workers shovel out MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey where the Super Bowl will be held on February 2. Another winter storm is scheduled to hit just one or two days before the big game Hit after hit: The storm scheduled to hit before the Super Bowl will be preceded by yet another snow storm earlier in the week

The arctic plunge: Freezing temperatures will sweep the country yet again this week. Temperatures will first plunge in the Midwest on Sunday before moving to the East Coast and down south on Monday and Tuesday Not normal: While most of the Midwest and East Coast has been dealing with colder-than-usual temperatures, most of the West has seen unusually mild temperatures Icy grip: A motorist passes a wall of icicles on Suck Creek Road as temperatures struggle to reach the freezing point

Bracing: Bart Potter hikes in the snow with his dogs Monty, left, and Goober, on a mountain trail just outside Boulder, Colorado

The weather has already caused widespread disruption across great swathes of the U.S. and is set to get worse.



Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC, said: 'The crazy thing is that the current cold snap this week look to be a bit more modest in the face of next week's outbreak.



'The cold coming for the end of January is sufficient to make this the coldest month of the century so far and the coldest the Lower 48 has felt in the last 20 years.'

Snow from an unexpected storm earlier in the week won't have a chance to melt before the northeast is hit with yet another blast early next week.



Cold delivery: On a day with single digit temperatures and a National Weather Service wind chill advisory, Henderson, Ky mail carrier Kevin Wilke prefers to make his rounds in shorts

Ice work: Douglas Houghton shovels the sidewalk outside of his house on Lowell Ave NE in Grand Rapids, Michigan

The first 'Alberta Clipper' storm is expected to arrive on the East Coast Monday with snow in the central Appalachians and New England a day before. The Weather Channel reported that wind chills were in the teens in the Midwest Thursday morning. In Minneapolis, schools were closed as the mercury plunged down to -18 and a wind chill of -38.

Some parts of the region and interior Northeast will see highs in the single digits, with a few enclaves in the upper Mississippi River Valley dipping into sub-zero temperatures.

Even Texas and Tennessee - states known for their usually mild climate – are feeling the bitter cold; Houston and San Antonio were expecting ice by tonight.

Residents of upstate New York, New York city, Philadelphia and New England will wake up Friday morning to bone-chilling temperatures, with lows in the single digits in some areas.

Following a temporary respite Saturday, a pair of surges of artic air will sweep down from Canada, bringing more flurries.

The storm will start off Saturday, taking a more southern route than Tuesday's storm.

It will hit the Ohio Valley Sunday night before making its way to the Mid-Atlantic region by Monday.

The storm will also affect the Midwest, causing possible dangerous driving conditions and flight delays in Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, New York.

According to AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist John Gresiak,'The combination of rounds of dry, powdery snow, gusty winds and low temperatures can make for whiteouts and brief blizzard conditions.'

The storm will hit the Midwest early, coming in on Thursday before dropping snow on Friday.

Down she goes: This woman slips and falls in Manhattan's Midtown on Wednesday morning after snow and ice left on the ground from Tuesday's snowstorm

Ouch: A man falls on the ice and snow along 5th Avenue and 40th St in New York Wednesday morning

Alisa Riley, of Hingham, Massachusetts, shovels snow from a sidewalk in front of a women's fitness center where she works in Scituate Wednesday after some towns in the state reported 18 inches of snowfall

New Yorkers make their way across a snow-covered Brooklyn Bridge Wednesday after the city was hit was almost a foot of snow from winter storm Janus

One of the large glass panels at the Apple Store in midtown Manhattan appeared to have shattered after it was knocked into by a snowblower The Northeast was under attack from brutally cold weather yesterday as a winter storm swirled up the coast, creating blizzard conditions on Cape Cod, disrupting government work in Washington and leaving New York City under a foot of snow. Winter storm Janus stretched from Kentucky to New England but hit hardest along the heavily populated Interstate 95 corridor between Philadelphia and Boston.

About 1,700 flights were canceled nationwide on Wednesday, according to according to flight-tracking site FlightAware.com. Workers load ice-melting compound into a spreader at the U.S. Capitol in Washington Wednesday after heavy snowfall from winter storm Janus The U.S. Capitol can be seen as people sleep inside a Metro Bus parked at Union Station that is designated a warming station for the homeless in the early hours of Wednesday morning New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio shovels snow outside his Brooklyn home on Wednesday morning

Cape Cod was under a blizzard warning through Wednesday afternoon.

Boston and Philadelphia ordered schools closed on Wednesday, following the lead the day before of many districts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.



Schools also were closed on Wednesday in Rhode Island, Connecticut, upstate New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, northern Virginia and the District of Columbia.



Amtrak told passengers on its busiest line, the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston, to expect fewer trains. Lines serving Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Albany, New York, also were slowed.

The storm put a damper on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's inauguration, forcing the cancellation of a Tuesday evening gala on Ellis Island.

In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick postponed his annual State of the State address, saying he was worried about guests trying to get to the statehouse.

City Hall Park and the Municipal Building in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday as the city prepared for another freezing cold day on the East Coast

A jogger braves sub-zero temperatures as she crosses the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday morning

In New York, Mayor de Blasio's administration has been accused of being slow to react to the snow, which hit a few hours earlier than expected Tuesday. Residents on the Upper East Side in Manhattan complained that their neighborhood was being deliberately ignored by snowploughs. One of the large glass panels at the Apple Store in midtown Manhattan appeared to have shattered after it was knocked into by a snowblower, according to photographer Daniel Levshin. The storm was a conventional one that developed off the coast and moved its way up the Eastern Seaboard, pulling in cold air from the Arctic. Unlike the epic freeze of two weeks ago, it was not caused by a kink in the polar vortex, the winds that circulate around the North Pole. Robert Burck, also known as the original 'Naked Cowboy', performs in a snow storm on the streets of Times Square, New York on Tuesday 'WHERE'S OUR SNOW PLOWS DE BLASIO?' UPPER EAST SIDE RESIDENTS ACCUSE NEW YORK MAYOR OF DELIBERATELY IGNORING THEM

In New York, Mayor de Blasio has come in for sharp criticism for his handling of the snow storm after residents in the Upper East Side complained that their neighborhood was being ignored by snow plows. At one point on Tuesday afternoon the city's PlowNYC website appeared to show no snow plows between East 59th and 79th Streets and between Second and Fifth Avenues.

Residents complained to the New York Post that the wealthy area had been deliberately ignored.

'He is trying to get us back. He is very divisive and political,' said one angry resident.

But Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty has claimed the map was inaccurate because one spreader had a broken GPS and so wasn't reporting its progress.

'The GPS was not working,' he said. 'Also, traffic created a lot of problems for us in that area.'

At the same press conference de Blasio stood by his performance.

'All city agencies are acting [like] usual very, very effectively and in a coordinated fashion.'

All public schools will be open Wednesday. Very dissapointed in mayor De Blasio !!! Streets are not plowed yet, where are the plows ??? False promises #NYC #snow #polarvortex #fail — SD (@s_brownie) January 22, 2014

The advancing cold will be severe enough to bring life-threatening conditions, hypothermia and the risk of frostbite to areas from the northern Plains to New England, reports Accuweather.



The penetrating cold has the potential to cause water main breaks as far south as the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic and to freeze pipes into parts of the South.

The storm was blamed for at least one death in Maryland, after a car fishtailed into the path of a tractor-trailer on a snow-covered road about 50 miles northwest of Baltimore and the car's driver was ejected.



Police said the storm might have claimed more lives: A preliminary investigation showed wet conditions played a role in a two-vehicle crash that killed two people in Prince George's County, Maryland, and a tractor-trailer that jackknifed on Interstate 81 in Frederick County, Virginia, ran off the highway and hit a tree, killing the driver.

A total of three waves of arctic air will blast across the Midwest and Northeast and into next week.



The next blast of arctic air will reach the Upper Midwest by Wednesday.



While temperatures will briefly rebound in between the reinforcing waves of cold air, the rebounds will be much less pronounced from the Midwest to New England and may be barely noticeable in the northern tier states.

A boy stands on steps with his shovel in the Williamsburg section of the Borough of Brooklyn in New York on Tuesday