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Bloomberg
While many Americans in the frozen Midwest hunker down indoors, central Iowa farmer Ethan Crow has been outside lining his barn and fences with extra bales of hay and corn stalks to break the wind hitting his cattle.
He checked on his roughly 50-head herd every few hours to make sure they had feed and he chipped ice off the water dispenser. First thing in the morning, a frozen valve had to be thawed with torches and heaters. Crow is among a legion of farmers, particularly those with livestock, faced with temperatures that in some areas are lower than in the South Pole.
“This has been one of the more challenging winters,†Crow, a third-generation farmer, said in a telephone interview.
Mid-morning the coldest place in the contiguous US was Park Rapids, Minnesota, at minus-41 degrees Fahrenheit (-41 Celsius), with a wind chill of minus-64 degrees, said Zack Taylor, a forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. The coldest wind chill was minus-65 degrees in Flag Island, Minnesota.
The cold air will shift and settle over Illinois, Indiana and parts of Michigan and Wisconsin later, Taylor said. Temperatures could fall to minus-35 degrees in Rockford, Illinois later.
The arctic weather prompted meat giant Tyson Foods Inc. to close six plants in the Upper Midwest due to concern for “worker and animal safety,†the company said in a statement.
It expects the facilities to resume production.