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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Vassia Barba

Truck fully submerged in icy lake as temperatures plunge to -13C in arctic blast

A crew from a towing company managed to pull a pickup truck out after it was fully submerged in a freezing lake and covered by ice.

The truck's driver managed to escape from his car when it became stuck in slushy conditions last week.

Once the driver was out and safe, the vehicle began its dive into the icy Crooked Lake, over 180 miles away from Milwaukee in Wisconsin, US.

It became fully submerged, however, the towing company determined the ice was too thin, and any attempt to pull the truck out would fail.

So they waited, confident that the ice would become thicker in the next few days, seeing the forecast for the arctic blast that would bring frigid temperatures to the area.

The driver got stuck in slushy conditions before the truck submerged fully under the icy surface (CBSNews)

Indeed, temperatures in the location plunged to -13C today, and once it was safe, the crew returned, positioned their equipment, and successfully pulled the vehicle out to the surface.

Pictures from the incident showed the crew having opened a square hole in the icy lake and towing the truck out.

The arctic blast that struck the country's Northeast brought dangerously cold sub-zero temperatures and wind chills, including a record-setting wind chill of -78C on the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

Boston; Providence, Rhode Island; Hartford, Connecticut; Worcester, Massachusetts; Albany, New York; and Glens Falls, New York set or matched record low temperatures on February 4, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures got so low that authorities in Massachusetts took the unusual step of keeping the South Station transit hub open overnight so homeless people had a safe place to sleep.

Several cities in the Northeast set or tied record low temperatures for the date, while the high winds brought down a tree branch on a car in western Massachusetts killing an infant.

Crew returned to the location after a few days and set out their equipment to pull the truck out (CBSNews)

The arctic air reached the region just as rapid cyclogenesis developed over Labrador and Newfoundland, churning up powerful winds, meteorologist Donald Dumont at the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said Friday, explaining the temperature plunge.

Cyclogenesis refers to an intensification of a cyclone or low-pressure storm system.

The Mount Washington Observatory at the peak of the Northeast’s highest mountain, famous for its extreme weather conditions, also recorded an actual temperature of -44C, tying an observatory record set in 1934 and a wind gust of 127 mph (204 kmh).

Across the rest of the region, wind chills — the combined effect of wind and cold air on exposed skin — dropped to as low as -45 to -50 degrees Fahrenheit (-43C to -45C), the National Weather Service reported.

In Southwick, Massachusetts on Friday the winds brought a tree branch down on a vehicle driven by a 23-year-old Winsted, Connecticut woman, according to the Hampden district attorney's office.

The driver was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, but the infant died, authorities said.

Boston's Pine Street Inn, the largest provider of homeless services in New England, ramped up outreach to those on the streets, doubling the number of vehicles that could transport people to shelters and opening their lobby to provide extra space.

The emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital treated several people for hypothermia overnight and a couple were admitted for frostbite.

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