Colorado has one more brutally cold night — and one more painfully chilly morning — ahead before the mercury begins a swift climb back into the normal range.
Much of the high country will remain under an Extreme Cold Warning until 9 a.m. Tuesday. Wind chills could make temperatures at higher elevations feel as cold as 35 to 50 degrees below zero. In those conditions, ten minutes is all it can take for exposed skin to develop frostbite.
In Southern Colorado and along the eastern edge of the state, the Extreme Cold Warning won’t lift until 11 a.m. Residents are warned to bundle up with care if they have to go out and watch out for freezing pipes overnight.
Conditions are marginally better along the Front Range, where a cold weather advisory is in place until 9 a.m. Tuesday. Lows around Denver will drop to around -6. Colorado Springs and Pueblo could get down to -10. But wind chill could make all those places feel much, much colder.
In Denver at least, the cold is not expected to break records. The coldest the city has ever been on Jan. 20 is -18, which it hit back in 1883.
Only a narrow slice along the Western Slope, from Nucla to Grand Junction, has been spared the arctic cold.
However, things are expected to improve Tuesday; temperatures should to climb back toward 40 along the Front Range, as the polar vortex releases its grip.
Still, several Colorado school districts will start late on Tuesday as the state waits out the last of subzero temperatures. Denver, Jefferson County, Aurora, Littleton, St. Vrain Valley and Weld, among others, are all on a two-hour delay.
Douglas County School District and the high schools in the Cherry Creek School District have a 90-minute cold delay. CSU will delay the start of all classes to 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
The cold, plus disruption from a winter storm in Texas, combined to cause some problems at Denver International Airport Monday. Hundreds of flights were delayed throughout the day and 25 canceled all together, landing Denver in second place on Flight Aware's Misery Map.
