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• A wave of arctic air from Canada is sweeping through the Midwest into the Northeast
  
• Historic warehouse in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood was destroyed in five-alarm fire last night; building is today sheathed in layers of ice
  
• Authorities believe the cold could have killed at least four people so far and are issuing health warnings
  
• The air north of Great Lakes 'colder than that of the North Pole'
  

By Beth Stebner

PUBLISHED: 06:04 EST, 23 January 2013 | UPDATED: 05:43 EST, 24 January 2013

A deep arctic freeze has locked parts of the Midwest to the Northeast in their fourth day of glacial temperatures felt as low as -36F degrees - freezing fountains, faces, and as breathtakingly seen in Chicago, entire buildings.

In the Windy City firemen battled a five-alarm warehouse fire in single-digit temperatures last night, with the extreme cold hindering the process. Water froze on firefighters’ gloves almost as soon as it left their hoses, and today, the entire façade of the building, located on the city’s South Side was coated in sheets of ice.

In New York's Manhattan, commuters similarly woke to temperatures around 12-degrees today, but with wind gusts of 15-20 mph, it felt more like five below as people started their work day.

The cold snap arrived on Saturday night as waves of Arctic air swept south from Canada, pushing temperatures to dangerous lows and leaving a section of the country well-versed in winter's pains reeling.

Wintry conditions from Minneapolis to Washington marked the coldest conditions in many parts of the United States in four years, but were nowhere near the record lows for January, meteorologists said.

'This cold that we are experiencing right now came straight from the arctic,' said Tom Kines, an AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist.

Washington, D.C., reported its coldest weather in four years, reaching 16F (-9C degrees) at Reagan National Airport on early Wednesday.

The National Weather Service issued a wind chill warning for New Hampshire until Wednesday evening, with values as low as 43-degrees below zero (minus 42 degrees Celsius) because of steady winds up to 20 miles per hour and gusts up to 30 mph.

Temperatures in Minnesota were on par with New York state, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.

West in Chicago, the warehouse fire was the biggest the city has seen in seven years, the Chicago Tribune reports, requiring a third of the city’s firefighters – 200 men and women – to battle the blaze.

The abandoned warehouse was still smouldering this morning, requiring additional firefighters to scale icy ladders to extinguish the hot spots.

Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago told the paper said the gelid temperatures made fighting the blaze even more dangerous.

‘We had the water department come out and steam off our ladders,’ he said.

The frigid temperatures across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast could have played a role in at least four reported deaths.

Residents in areas of the Midwest that are used to the cold are finding ways to cope. Faye Whitbeck, a resident of International Falls, Minnesota and the president of the town’s chamber of commerce, said that she’s using a Snuggie to keep warm.

The temperature along the town, which is near the Canadian border, was -30F on Tuesday morning. The so-called 'Nation's Icebox' reached a balmy 3 below for a high. 'I pulled out a coat that went right to my ankles this morning and I wore two scarves,’ she told the Associated Press

Among the coldest temperatures recorded Tuesday was 35 below at Crane Lake, Minnesota, a National Weather Service forecaster said early Wednesday.

The coldest location in the lower 48 states Monday was Embarrass, Minnesota, at 36 below. On Sunday it was Babbitt, Minnesota, at 29 below, according to the National Weather Service.

Forecasters said late Tuesday that overnight temperatures wouldn't get that low, but warned it was still frigid: Embarrass, was up to 15 below by late Tuesday night

The bitter conditions were expected to persist into the weekend in the Midwest through the eastern half of the U.S., said Shawn DeVinny, a National Weather Service meteorologist in suburban Minneapolis.

Ariana Laffey, a 30-year-old homeless woman, kept warm with a blanket, three pairs of pants and six shirts as she sat on a milk crate begging near Chicago's Willis Tower on Tuesday morning. She said she and her husband spent the night under a bridge, bundled up under a half-dozen blankets.

'We're just trying to make enough to get a warm room to sleep in tonight,' Laffey told the AP.

But in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where winter temperatures are normally well below freezing, some homeless shelters had open beds. Shelter managers suspect people who needed a place to stay were already using the services before the temperatures reached more extreme lows.

The first cold snap of the season was in early December. Overnight temperatures dropped to 9 below with the wind chill. In Vermillion, South Dakota, a water pipe break forced the evacuation of a dormitory at the University of South Dakota, with nearly 500 students offered hotel rooms.

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, residents woke to a wind chill that made it feel like 35 below. The temperature in Madison, Wis., was a whopping 1 degree above just before midday Tuesday. For northern Illinois, it was the first time in almost two years that temperatures had dipped below zero.

The temperature in Detroit was a toasty 7 degrees with a 10 below wind chill around midday. City officials said they planned to extend hours at its two warming centers. A warming center run by St. Peter and Paul Jesuit Church downtown that usually sees 50 to 60 people on a typical winter day had taken in about 90 people Tuesday morning.

Police in Milwaukee, where the temperature was just 2 degrees at noon, checked under freeway overpasses to find the homeless and urge them to find a shelter. The United Way of Greater Milwaukee has donated $50,000 to two homeless shelters so they can open overflow centers.

'We're incredibly relieved,' said Donna Rongholt-Migan, executive director of the Cathedral Center, a Milwaukee shelter that received $25,000. 'I was walking my dog last night and I couldn't feel my legs just after walking around the block.'

Schools across the region either started late or didn't open at all. Districts in Duluth, Minn., and Ashland, Bayfield, Hurley, Washburn and Superior in far northern Wisconsin closed amid warnings that the wicked wind chills could freeze exposed flesh within a minute.

'It's brutal,' Courtney Thrall, a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student, said as she waited for her bus, her fur-trimmed parka hood pulled over her head.

On Sunday, a 70-year-old man was found frozen in his unheated home in Des Plaines, Illinois. And in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a 38-year-old man was found dead outside his home Monday morning. Authorities in both cases said the victims died of hypothermia and cold exposure, with alcohol a possible contributing factor.

A 77-year-old Illinois woman also was found dead near her car in southwestern Wisconsin on Saturday night, and a 61-year-old Minnesota man was pronounced dead at a hospital after he was found in a storage building Saturday morning.

The plunging temperatures made life plenty miserable for plumbers.

Workers in Madison had to repair at least four water main breaks since Sunday afternoon. Jim Gilchrist, a third-generation plumber in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, said he received about five or six calls Tuesday from people with frozen water pipes in their homes. Few pipes had actually burst - yet.

 VIDEO  Midwest shivers under punishing cold snap

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