“The Freeze: Part II” is coming to water pipes, furnaces, car batteries, fingers, noses, toes and ears near you.
The arctic blanket covering the Chicago area got kicked aside long enough Sunday for temperatures to sneak above zero for the first time in 60 hours (warm enough to snow), but a second bout of bitter weather is predicted to hit Monday afternoon.
By Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service, it may be as cold as minus 25 degrees in the city and 30 below or so in the far western suburbs. With the windchill factor, it will actually feel closer to minus 80.
If so, that will break the all-time low for Jan. 18 of minus 16 and could count among the coldest days in Chicago history. Those are, for the record, Jan. 20, 1985, when it was minus 27 degrees and Jan. 16, 1982, when it was minus 26.
Of more practical concern, however, is the havoc the polar conditions will continue to wreak on those trying to cope with the cold-and potential risks are only expected to increase as workplaces and schools reopen Tuesday after Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
“This weekend, people could just stay inside,” said Robert Bayer, assistant professor of medicine at Loyola University. “The trick will be this week when people have to go back to work and go outside.”
Among the most serious threats are frostbite and hypothermia, which can occur in a matter of minutes in severely cold weather.
“The windchill is the biggest danger,” Bayer said. “You’re wearing all these clothes, you get a little sweaty, and if you’re not protected from the wind, it can really bring your body temperature down quickly.”
Protection is fairly simple: dress in layers, with a layer closest to the skin that can absorb moisture; wear a hat and gloves; keep a spare pair of dry shoes handy (toes are the most common victims of frostbite); and avoid alcohol because it accelerates heat loss.
“The big thing is to recognize when you’re getting frostbite or hypothermia and to get inside and get warm,” Bayer said.
Keeping warm inside can also be a problem. By 5 p.m. Sunday, the Mayor’s Office of Inquiry and Information in Chicago had received 248 calls reporting no heat and 296 reporting inadequate heat.
Supplemental heating devices, particularly space heaters and fireplaces, must be used with caution, advised Chicago Fire Department spokesman Mike Cosgrove. Both should be in well-ventilated areas, away from combustible materials, and should not be left unattended, he said.
Space heaters were believed to be responsible for at least two fires Saturday and Sunday, one of which killed a 3-year-old child and injured five others.
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The remnants of an electric heater were removed from a 1 1/2-story brick house at 13412 Clifton Park Ave. in south suburban Robbins after a blaze swept through the home early Sunday.
A 3-year-old, whose name was not released, was killed in the fire. Three other children, a 72-year-old woman and a Robbins Police Department patrolman were being treated at area hospitals. On Chicago’s South Side, a portable heater being used by a squatter ignited a fire Saturday night that destroyed an abandoned building, but no one was injured.
Frozen or broken pipes were the complaint of dozens of people who called the Chicago Water Department this weekend, according to Assistant Commissioner Robert Harmening.
During sub-zero weather, cold water should be left trickling through a faucet overnight, Harmening said. Pipes also can be wrapped with insulation or heated tape, available from most hardware stores. If pipes do freeze, they should be thawed with a hair dryer or another heating device, but not an open flame, he said.
Commuters greeted by the dreaded whine, click or silence after trying to start their cars, should, as one tow truck driver succinctly put it, “plan to be late for work.”
By lunchtime Sunday, one business-North Shore Towing in Evanston-had already responded to almost 100 calls for help, said driver and dispatcher Al Warnock.
“If people keep a regular maintenance schedule, changing their oil and getting regular tuneups, they shouldn’t have a problem,” he said. “My car started right up this morning.”
He also recommended that car owners keep their gas tanks full, park the vehicle out of the wind and cover the engine at night with an old blanket, providing, of course, that the engine isn’t warm at the time.
As for the weather, it isn’t expected to warm up until Friday, when it could reach a whopping 30 degrees in the Chicago area, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Darmofal.
Yes, but when is real relief on the way?
“Probably April,” he said.