By Phil Helsel -
NBC News
Warming centers opened across Maine Thursday as the state braced for very cold temperatures that could bring a wind chill as low as 60 degrees below zero, officials said.
Low temperatures of 35 degrees below zero could be felt along the Maine coasts and minus 45 in the foothills, the governor's office said in an advisory to residents to stay prepared and safe.
“Frost and hypothermia are real risks when temperatures are this extreme,” Nirav D. Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, for its acronym in English), recalled in a statement.
[“It Happened Again”: Cars Keep Plunging Down a Massive Sinkhole That Split a California Highway in Half]
Wind chill advisories affected more than 16 million people in the US on Thursday night, according to the National Weather Service, with the largest area stretching from Syracuse and Binghamton, New York, to New England and Maine.
The weather service in Caribou in far northeast Maine, where there was also a blizzard warning, said winds of 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers per hour) and wind chills as low as minus 60 degrees were possible.
The coastal wind chill of minus 40 to minus 45 degrees along the Maine coast could be the coldest some Mainers have ever felt.
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“Although not official, from the records we've been able to gather, the coldest wind chill in Portland since 1948 was -43 degrees in 1971, so we're close to wind chill values most haven't seen. in his lifetime," the weather service said in a forecast discussion.
Wind chill advisories will be in effect from 4 a.m. Friday through 7 p.m. Saturday in Caribou.
In the state capital, Augusta, the advisory is from 10 a.m. Friday to 1 p.m. Saturday.
[An ice storm in the southern US leaves more than 450,000 people without power and causes at least eight deaths]
Other northeastern states were preparing and warning residents.
Massachusetts' emergency management agency warned of dangerous cold late Friday and into Saturday, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the cold could be life-threatening.
Power companies including National Grid and Central Maine Power said they were preparing for freezing temperatures.
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In New York, the minimum temperatures expected for Friday night were 9 degrees, and the city's emergency management department warned that the wind chill could be 5 degrees below zero.
In Boston, a low of 8 degrees below zero was forecast for Friday night.
The wind chill could reach 35 degrees below zero, according to the weather service.
Boston closed schools Friday to protect students.
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Arctic gust forecast warnings for the northeast come as a deadly ice storm that caused misery in Texas was winding down Thursday.
But the effects persisted there.
More than 323,000 homes and businesses in the state were still without power Thursday night, mostly in central and northeast Texas.
Austin Energy, which had 142,000 customers without power as of Thursday night, said it was unable to provide an estimated time for restoration of the entire system.
The Oncor company had about 100,000 customers without power.
