MT. WASHINGTON, NH (CBS) — Summit conditions at Mount Washington were so brutally cold Saturday (Jan. 6) morning the temperature tied for the second coldest on Earth, according to Mount Washington Observatory.
The temperature hit minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit — with a wind chill of minus 90 (minus 68 degrees Celsius), according to the educational and research institution in New Hampshire.
“We basically just start saying it’s stupid cold outside,” Mike Carmon, senior meteorologist at Mount Washington Observatory, told The New York Times.
The summit of Mount Washington sits at 6,288 feet above sea level.
Frigid conditions have also gripped other parts of the Northeast and are expected to last most of the weekend. On Saturday, wind chill warnings throughout the Northeast hit Burlington, Vermont, with a temperature of minus 1 and a wind chill of minus 30. Both Philadelphia and New York were shivering at 8 degrees, with wind chills of minus 11 in Philadelphia and minus 9 in New York.
And in Hartford, Connecticut, a brutal cold of 10 degrees yielded a wind chill of minus 20.
In New Jersey, many people chose to stay home instead of dealing with single-digit temperatures. Others were cleaning up from the storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in some spots earlier in the week.
“My car felt like an icebox this morning, even though I had the heat on full blast,” Julie Williams said as she sipped coffee inside a Jackson Township convenience store. She was headed to work at a local supermarket, and was expecting the store to be packed.
In Rhode Island, hospitals were treating dozens of storm-related injuries as the region grits through a deep freeze that followed a powerful blizzard, while in Providence and Newport, at least 40 people were treated for various weather-related conditions, from heart attacks, snowblower or shoveling injuries, motor vehicle accidents, frostbite, hypothermia and injuries including slips and falls, according to The Providence Journal.
“It’s definitely cold and the type of bone-chilling cold that happens every few years,” said Dan Hofmann, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Baltimore.
