More than 100 million Americans are set to be impacted by the arctic blast known as the "Siberian Express" as record (low) temperatures are being broken across the eastern third of the nation. NBC News reports, Chicago is experiencing its coldest February since 1875 with roads in an "ice skating rink-like condition." From ice geysers to snow-golf and frozen falls, we can only imagine the breath-taking impact this 'polar-vortex'-esque weather will have on US GDP... Coldest location in the Lower 48 Thursday morning was -42 degrees near Cotton, Minnesota. https://twitter.com/hashtag/arcticblast?src=hash!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); https://twitter.com/hashtag/mnwx?src=hash!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); pic.twitter.com/V2mqZRRuj5 — The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) https://twitter.com/weatherchannel/status/568419740835831809!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); The coldest outbreak of the season is pushing south into the eastern United States this week. Temperatures will be running as low as 30 to 40 degrees below normal across the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic on Friday morning. Thursday night’s departure from normal temperatures is shown above in Celsius. Windchill warnings across a third of the nation... And the forecast for tomorrow is even lower... * * * A perfectly rolled roof... With daggers hanging from the eves... Machines hard at work... But people are going nowehere... Chickens not happy... Nor are cats... Snow Golf anyone? An Ice Geyser!! And Niagara Falls has frozen!! * * * And while this makes life more difficult for many - as beautiful as it is in some cases - the last time this happened, US GDP crashed 5%.. It was about a year ago today, when economist consensus, ever true to its "momentum extrapolation" ways, predicted that in the first quarter of 2014 US GDP would grow by a solid 2.2% (down from 2.9% predicted several months previously). This happened even as the very economists forecasting the GDP number allegedly had problems getting to and from work, due to all the snow and cold weather. Yes, in the middle of winter: truly unheard of. The rest was history: a few months later when the final calculation of annualized Q1 GDP was released on June 25, the BEA reported that it had crashed by a whopping 2.9%: a delta of more than 5%! And since nobody had predicted such an epic collapse in the US economy, an excuse was promptly cobbled together: the weather, and specifically, the "polar vortex" of January and early February, that was raging at the time when those calculating the impact of the weather on GDP only saw it subtracting a few basis points of growth.