CHICAGO, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Temperatures were down to as low as 35 degrees below zero Tuesday along the U.S.-Canadian border as cold weather blanketed the Midwest and the Northeast.
The lowest temperature reported by Accuweather was a bone-chilling 35 degrees below in Crane, Minn., with lows in the 30s in Big Fork and Ely in Minnesota and Clayton Lake, Maine. In Chicago, the temperature dropped to minus-1 at O'Hare International Airport at 8 a.m., the first below-zero reading in the area in two years, the Chicago Tribune reported.
In Indianapolis, temperatures plunged to close to zero Monday night and Tuesday morning, the Indianapolis Star said. Temperatures were the lowest in two years.
The Wheeler Mission downtown homeless shelter was at more than double its capacity Monday night with 330 people trying to stay warm. A spokesman, Steve Kerr, said the shelter would make space, with many spending the night on the floor.
"Obviously, it's the cold," he said. "Last year was a very mild winter; we didn't have numbers nearly as big as this year."
At the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the temperature dropped below zero for the first time in four years Monday, plunging to 4 below, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press reported. In Duluth, Minn., the temperature hit 10 below on Monday, the lowest since 2007.
Around the Great Lakes, the low temperatures were accompanied by lake-effect snow, Weather.com reported. Erie, Pa., got 24 inches Monday in some areas, while 18 inches of snow covered much of western New York State.
