good morning, i m muhammad lila in for john muller. and i m marci gonzalez in for diana perez. we begin with the brutal cold. that is sweeping across much of the continent. the latest weather map shows the polar vortex pushing superfrigid air from the north pole as far south as louisiana. highs today across a wide swath of the midwest will be well below zero. in chicago, where the schools today will be closed, overnight temperatures at minus 20 degrees. st. louis, heavy snow is falling with forecasters calling for up to a foot of snow. some folks in st. louis are resorting to ditching their shoes in favor of cross-country skis, as you see right there, like this man in university city. we have more from mary bruce in washington. reporter: there s cold and then there s this. bitter, bone-chilling, freezing air sweeping across half of the continental u.s. an arctic blast plunging temperatures to lows not felt in decades. it was just getting nice and balmy, 7 below. r
la in for john muller. and i m marcy gonzales in for diana perez. we begin with the brutal cold. the polar vortex pushing superfrigid air from the north pole as far south as louisiana. highs today across a wide swath of the midwest will be well below zero. in chicago, overnight temperatures at minus 20 degrees. st. louis, heavy snow is falling with forecasters calling for up to a foot of snow. some people ditching shoes for cross-country skis. like this man in university city. we have more from mary bruce in washington. reporter: there s cold and then there s this. bitter, bone-chilling, freezing air sweeping across half of the continental u.s. an arctic blast sending temperatures to lows not felt in decades. it was low. reporter: wind chill warnings. 12 below in pittsburgh. it s so cold in chicago, residents bracing for the big chill now calling their city chi-beria. in minneapolis, so cold, frostbite can occur in just five minutes. midwest cities including chica
values. these are actual air temperatures. it s negative 1 in pittsburgh, negative 2 in detroit and chicago absolutely frigid with a temperature of 12 degrees below 0. we won t see negative numbers here, but when you factor in the wind chill, it will feel like it s in the negative digits, 0 to 10 our overnight low and it will be dangerously cold with that wind chill. i m expecting wind chills to be as low as negative 20 in a couple locations which could cause frostbite in as little as 30 minutes. coming up i ll tell you when we finally see relief from the cold in the first alert seven- day forecast. derek, back to you. we should note we re already getting in closings and delays for tomorrow. fairfax, culpeper, loudoun county, prince william county, spotsylvania, stafford counties will all have schools closed tomorrow. alexandria and prince george s county schools will be open two hours late. d.c. and montgomery county schools tell us they re open for business regular time t
investigating the affair. more than 2,000 pages of e-mails, letters and other correspondence. a lot to go through. no smoking gun right now, perhaps, but clear indications at this point that chris christie s top appointee to the agency as well as another christie appointee were aware that closing several lanes of traffic leading to the george washington bridge could cause political fallout. they also reveal that state officials were made aware that the traffic was potentially affecting public safety. again, though, no smoking gun like the one that touched off the scandal in the first place. christie aide bridget kelly s e-mail to port authority david wildstein wild stein is gone from his job take the fifth. when asked about the affair governor christie fired kelly yesterday as you may know. she may soon be called to give testimony. that could be interesting of course. a source telling cnn it s widely held in trenton this traffic mess wasn t her order. whose order was it?
course and an area with no significant land masses. so the focus is still on finding that aircraft. we have just learned that that search is expanding. it s pushing further east and further west. the u.s. is also trying to help. they are sending in the uss kidd to the indian ocean. and also activity on the sea floor hours after the plane went missing nearly one week ago. we are turning to our reporters all around the world. we will start with jim clancy in kuala lumpur. reporter: let me give you a little bit of perspective on what we re talking about about the deliberate track the plane took. malaysian officials are in a press briefing right now. they told us that the pilot may have attempted a turnback. transponder went off. they can turn that off if they think there s a short and it s causing a problem. maybe that s why they turned it off. they had a problem. then the pilot turned. they think he was trying to turn back to come back right where i am. but he didn t make t