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America's brutal cold snap highlights rising cost of energy
By David Sharp
Ice slowly forms on Lake Michigan between Oak Street and North Avenue beaches after days of frigid temperatures and a cold, quiet night. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
PORTLAND, MAINE — Plunging temperatures across half the country on Thursday underscored a stark reality for low-income Americans who rely on heating aid: Their dollars aren't going to go as far this winter because of rising energy costs.
Forecasters warned people to be wary of hypothermia and frostbite from an arctic blast that's gripping a large swath from the Midwest to the Northeast, where the temperature, without the wind chill factored in, dipped to minus 32 on Thursday morning in Watertown, New York.
Even before the cold snap, the Department of Energy projected that heating costs were going to track upward this winter, and many people are keeping a wary eye on their fuel tanks to ensure they don't run out.
The burden caused by higher prices and higher energy usage is felt by all Americans, especially those who struggle to stay warm.
Elizabeth Parker, 88, of Sanford, Maine, said she lives in fear of running out of heating fuel and remains vigilant in monitoring the gauge outside her trailer. She said she is allowed to request a fuel delivery thanks to federal aid, but only when her gauge dips to one-eighth of a tank.
"I couldn't get along without it," said Parker, who lives with her husband, Robert Parker, 93, along with a cat, a dog and four birds.
Prolonged, dangerous cold weather this week has sent advocates for the homeless scrambling to get people off the streets and to bring in extra beds for them. Warming centers also were set up in some locations. Frozen pipes and dead car batteries added to the misery across the region.
President Donald Trump said the East Coast could be facing "the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record" and poked fun at scientists who say the earth, in general, is getting warmer.
"Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against," Trump tweeted. "Bundle up!"
Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about climate change science, calling global warming a "hoax" created by the Chinese, and has announced his intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement aimed at curbing greenhouse gas production. The U.N.'s weather and climate agency, though, has said 2017 is on track to be the hottest year on record aside from those impacted by the El Nino phenomenon.
In western New York and Erie, Pennsylvania, residents were still cleaning up from massive snowfall. Firefighters had to use a bucket loader to rescue someone trapped in her home in Lorraine, New York.
In Ohio, a dog was found frozen solid on the porch of a house in Toledo, and a third body was recovered near a car that slid off an icy road and flipped into a canal days earlier in the city of Oregon.
Despite the cold, there was some good news for recipients of federal aid from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Trump, a Republican, released nearly $3 billion, or roughly 90 percent, of the funding in October after previously trying to eliminate the program.
But projected energy cost increases will effectively reduce the purchasing power by $330 million, making it imperative that the remaining funds be released, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.
This winter, energy costs were projected to grow by 12 percent for natural gas, 17 percent for home heating oil, 18 percent for propane and 8 percent for electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Energy prices may even be higher than those projections. According to Wolfe, colder weather could lead to even higher levels of consumption, and resulting prices could push the cost of winter heating up to $1,800 this winter for those using heating oil, 45 percent more than last year's level.
In North Carolina, the governor signed an emergency declaration to allow heating fuel to be more easily distributed during the chilly blast.
On Thursday, cold weather records were set from Arkansas to Maine, and the cold air will linger through the weekend, reaching as far south as Texas and the Florida Panhandle through the weekend.
In New Hampshire, the cold set a record for the day of minus 34 atop the Northeast's highest peak, Mount Washington, where a video was posted showing a weather observer emptying a pitcher of boiling water into the air, where it immediately turns to snow.
In the Midwest, temperatures in Minneapolis aren't expected to top zero this weekend, and it likely will be in the teens when the ball drops on New Year's Eve in New York City.
It was so cold officials in New Jersey canceled a New Year's Day polar bear plunge, in which swimmers dash into the Atlantic Ocean.
A winter storm warning was in effect for much of Montana, calling for significant snowfall followed by dangerously cold temperatures as 2017 comes to an end.