55-year-old man was found 'frozen' to death just steps from his Wisconsin home
The terrible cold that plagues the northern states has begun to take lives. This time, a 55-year-old man was found dead and completely frozen right outside his home.
Charles Lampley was found in the 4200 Block of North 64th Street, he was a few steps away from his house in a detached residential garage. Besides the extreme weather, authorities have not confirmed yet if the cause of death was actually the low temperatures.
Lampley was fully clothed and dressed properly for the cold weather. However, the garage door was open and the man was still holding his shovel when he was found, as a spokesperson told.
The extreme cold wave that plagues the Midwest region of the United States, with colder temperatures today than those of the South Pole or Alaska, has paralyzed the main cities of this region and left at least six deaths related to the storm.
The "Polar Vortex" is a common atmospheric phenomenon but practically unknown to many of the inhabitants of the regions outside the Arctic Circle.
The vortex is a kind of permanent cyclone difficult to visualize because it is at a high altitude at the terrestrial poles, in the troposphere. There are two, in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
The areas of low pressure are reinforced in the winter and weak in the summer. The Arctic vortex has two centers, one in Siberia and the other close to Baffin Island, Canada.
Although the vortices are persistent phenomena, what happened this time in the northern hemisphere is that a part of the arctic vortex broke off and moved southward as a result of air currents, bringing air from the Arctic to regions that although face hard winters do not get to have temperatures at Arctic level.
The phenomenon is not dangerous in itself, as it can be a tornado or a hurricane, but the descent to temperatures that with the wind factor can reach -51 ° C, it can be an element of great risk for life human and animal.
As well as the affectation in the communications, the industry and the supply of light and fuel is very severe. At temperatures below -45 ° C, human skin freezes in about 5 minutes.
In a similar story, a 70-year-old grandmother passed away from hypothermia after the council failed to repair her central heating.
Susan Baines' body was found with a core temperature of 29.5 degrees in her Kent home. People are at risk of developing hypothermia at 35 degrees, and she was below that.