The "polar vortex" is sweeping the country and it's bringing record-breaking freezing temperatures along with it.
"Think of this as a polar hurricane," NBC News' Al Roker said, NBC reported.
Twenty-six states are currently under "wind-chill warnings" as winds whip in from the North Pole.
A polar vortex is an Arctic cyclone that tends to spin "counterclockwise around the north and south poles," NBC reported. This particular storm moved through Canada before heading south to the U.S.
The storm may have moved our way because warmer air built up in Greenland or Alaska, forcing the colder air southward, although this is not for sure.
"This very well just may be one of those anomalies where it forces itself southward," Frank Giannasca, senior meteorologist with The Weather Channel said, NBC reported.
The storm has caused some extremely low temperatures across the U.S. It was 16 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in Chicago on Monday; Minneapolis saw temperatures of negative 18. Negative 40 with wind chill. The temperatures could be pushed down to a frigid negative 60, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"The big story was the wind chill factors," Jim Keeney, a meteorologist at the National Weather Center's regional headquarters in Kansas City, told the LA Times. "[subzero temperatures are something we haven't seen in 10 to 15 years."
About 3,300 flights have been cancelled across the country as a result of the extreme weather and 2,000 have been delayed.
The low temperatures are dangerous, and some cities have been taking appropriate action.
"The good news is that this wasn't an ice storm, so we don't have massive power outages," Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency told the LA Times. "The people of Missouri did a really good job of staying off the roads and allowing road crews to do their jobs."
"The city of St. Louis made an especially strong effort to take care of homeless people and bolstering their shelters," he said
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