Across the country, people bundle up to face arctic temperatures and icy blasts of wind that put over 180 million Americans under wind chill advisories and warnings, the Weather Channel reported yesterday.

“This morning, there were literally tears streaming down my face because of the wind, and I was only outside for 30 seconds,” Anna Kornreich, junior, said.

Bypassing the West, the bone-chilling blast will rip through much of the Midwest into southern and eastern states “all the way to the Gulf Coast by Thursday morning,” according to the Weather Channel, prompting school closings and delays in several regions.

Strong polar gales and wind chills cause “feels like” temperatures to plummet. These dangerous and potentially life-threatening winds can freeze exposed skin in just a few minutes, as the wind carries heat away from the body much faster than still air.

“The cold personally has not been that bothersome due to being exposed to it all my life,” Mitch Lauenstein, junior, said. “It cancelled the [ski] race we were supposed to have [yesterday] and it just makes us hope for warmer weather.”

NBC News reports that more snow is also expected in the forecast for the rest of the week, “mostly around the Great Lakes. Parts of Michigan could get a foot through Friday, and a foot and a half could fall outside Syracuse, New York.”

The Weather Channel assures the country that temperatures should return to normal, at least for winter in Wisconsin, this weekend, with high temperatures in Mequon climbing into the mid to upper-20s by Sunday.

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The temperature this morning felt like 23 degrees below zero, even though the actual temperature was four degrees below zero, showing the effect of the frigid wind chill. The record low for Wisconsin occurred on Feb. 4, 1996, and temperatures that day reached 55 degrees below zero, according to USA Today. Photo by Erin Connolly