Ohioans shiver through freeze

The cold snap has claimed at least six lives and contributed to dozens of traffic accidents.

Associated Press

Gusty winds Friday pushed temperatures in Ohio to their lowest of the winter, forcing another round of school closings and causing scattered power outages.

Low temperatures in the state’s major cities ranged from minus 6 degrees in Cincinnati to minus 14 degrees in Dayton and Toledo — just missing record lows for the date.

Forecasters said temperatures in the upper Midwest could turn into the lowest in years as frigid air keeps spilling south from Canada. The cold snap has claimed at least six lives and contributed to dozens of traffic accidents as vehicles slipped and slid on icy roads.

In Ohio, American Electric Power reported about 2,800 of its customers were without power Friday, mostly in several southern counties.

About 100 northwest Ohio residential customers of Toledo Edison lost power, as well as businesses that included a National City Bank building in downtown Toledo.

Officials said extreme cold can cause the metal in underground cables to become brittle and fail.

The bitter temperatures coupled with ferocious wind chills closed schools throughout Ohio, including districts in Columbus, Cleveland, Canton, Toledo and Youngstown.

In Mason, vandals unplugged engine heaters on school buses, forcing classes to be canceled for about 11,000 students. The heaters are needed to start diesel engines in harsh cold.

School spokeswoman Tracey Carson said the vandalism discovered about 5:45 a.m. Friday was very frustrating. Morning temperatures were several degrees below zero.

School officials and city police planned to review surveillance camera footage of the district’s garage. Mason is about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

In Columbus, Brandon Champney took refuge from the cold at the Franklin Park Conservatory, which has a 72-degree orchid exhibit that had the glass-paneled roof dripping with condensation.

Champney, 45, sat in a gazebo with his laptop computer.

“It’s beautiful, warm, great,” he said.

Television meteorologists in the Akron area received calls Wednesday night from people wondering about what appeared to beams of light in the sky shooting upward from a line of spotlights.

Such light pillars are produced in near-zero temperatures when fluttering ice crystals in the air reflect lights on the ground, according to Thomas Schmidlin, associate professor of climatology at Kent State University.

Schmidlin said it’s a rare phenomenon for Ohio but is more common in typical cold-weather locations, such as Alaska.

The bitter cold was expected to ease up over the weekend.

The National Weather Service said temperatures would be in the upper teens to upper 20s today around the state, dip into the teens tonight, and then rise Sunday to the upper 20s to lower 30s.

A low-pressure system dropping across the Great Lakes also is expected to bring snow to northern Ohio from this afternoon through Sunday morning.