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The big chill
January 13, 2005

Many areas of Minnesota saw several inches of snow fall Wednesday -- and now are bracing for below zero weather for the next several days. (MPR Photo/Tim Post)

The coldest weather of the season is bearing down on Minnesota and the upper Midwest. Temperatures are falling, wind chills are dropping, and people everywhere are bundling up.

Undated — (AP) - Temperatures are already dropping, and they're expected to fall a lot further.

Temperatures were in the single digits Twin Cities area late Thursday morning, and they continue to go down. It's below zero in northern Minnesota.

Temperatures are expected around 7 below this afternoon in St. Cloud, and around zero in Mankato, and 3 above in Rochester.

The real freeze will set in tonight, with lows 30 to 40 below zero in northern Minnesota, 20 below in St. Cloud, and 14 below around the Twin Cities area tonight.

Strong northwesterly winds will continue to blow across much of the state during the day, bringing wind chills down to dangerous levels in some places.

Wind chills will also go down during the day -- bottoming out in the afternoon at -45 degrees in the northwest, and the teens below zero in the southeast.

The bone-chilling arctic air will park itself across southern Minnesota by Friday, and won't move much through the weekend.

Icy roads may have been factors in at least two fatal crashes in Minnesota.

On Wednesday, Jessica Lea Van Horn, 22, of Aitkin, died when she lost control of her vehicle and went into oncoming traffic in Aitkin County. A day earlier, Roger Henry Connaughty, 67, of Goodview, died when his vehicle crashed into a tree in Lake City.

Officials said roadways were icy in both accidents.

Transportation officials are advising drivers to use caution in the cold snap. When temperatures approach 20 below, as they are expected to by the weekend, sodium chloride applications no longer work on street surfaces, said Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman Kent Barnard. The only thing officials can do to clear the roads is scrape.

As the cold began to settle in, Attorney General Mike Hatch blasted CenterPoint Energy for "illegally" shutting off heat to needy customers. Nearly 700 CenterPoint customers, many of whom were disconnected months ago for not paying bills, remained without heat Wednesday. The utility serves 745,000 Minnesotans.

While 365 families have been reconnected in recent weeks, Hatch criticized the company for "disregarding humanity" and the Cold Weather Rule, which says that a residential customer's heating utility can't be disconnected between Oct. 15 and April 15, if the customer meets certain requirements, including making an effort to pay.

Hatch said the customers in question were cut off for failure to pay their bills. "If (CenterPoint) works the system the way it's intended, they'll eventually get paid," he said.

CenterPoint's director of government and public relations, Tracy Bridge, said that service had been restored to more than 10,000 of the 11,000 customers who had been disconnected before the weather turned cold.

"Nobody has been discontinued since the start of winter," Bridge said.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)