The polar vortex that locked the US Midwest in sub-zero weather and led to the deaths of at least 21 people will give way to milder, snow-melting temperatures this weekend.
The polar vortex is an icy cap of air that usually swirls over the North Pole. Changing air currents caused it to slip down through Canada and into the US Midwest this week.
"The cold air isn't pushing off anywhere, it's just sort of evaporating," said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland.
"So we're going from (minus 29C) in Chicago Thursday morning to near (10C) above on Monday," he said. "It'll feel like a heat wave."
Temperatures in the Upper Midwest will reach well above minus 18C on Friday.
More than 40 cold-temperature records were broken Thursday, the coldest morning since the polar vortex moved in late on Tuesday. The mass of arctic air had clung to a swath of the US from Iowa and the Dakotas across the Great Lakes region and into Maine for days.
The coldest recorded temperature was minus 48C in Cotton, Minnesota, on Thursday, the weather service said.
Officials across multiple states linked numerous deaths to the frigid air. The death toll rose after at least nine more people in Chicago were reported to have died from cold-related injuries, according to Stathis Poulakidas, a doctor at the city's John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital.
But on Friday, Amtrak train services that were halted since Wednesday in Chicago's hub will resume, as will US Postal service halted or limited in six Midwest states.
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