With a final blast below zero degrees, a polar vortex leaves Colorado

Colorado has another brutally cold night – and another painfully chilly morning – ahead of it before the mercury quickly rises back to normal.

An extreme cold warning is in effect for large parts of the highlands until 9 a.m. Tuesday. Wind chill could cause temperatures at higher elevations to feel as low as 35 to 50 degrees below zero. Under these conditions, it can take as little as ten minutes for frostbite to develop on exposed skin.

In southern Colorado and the eastern edge of the state, the extreme cold warning will not be lifted until 11 a.m. Residents are warned to dress carefully if going out overnight and to be careful of frozen pipes.

Conditions are slightly better along the Front Range, where a cold weather warning is in effect until 9 a.m. Tuesday. Lows around Denver will fall to around -6. Colorado Springs and Pueblo could drop to -10. But the chilly wind could make all of these places feel much, much colder.

At least in Denver, the cold isn’t expected to break any records. The coldest temperature the city has ever had on January 20th was -18°C, which occurred in 1883.

Only a narrow section along the Western Slope, from Nucla to Grand Junction, has been spared from the arctic cold.

However, the situation is expected to improve on Tuesday; Temperatures should rise back to 40°C along the Front Range as the polar vortex loses its influence.

Still, several school districts in Colorado will have a late start on Tuesday as the state waits out the last of the subzero temperatures. Denver, Jefferson County, Aurora, Littleton, St. Vrain Valley and Weld, among other things, all with a two-hour delay.

The Douglas County School District and high schools in the Cherry Creek School District are on a 90-minute cold delay. The CSU is postponing the start of all courses to Tuesday, 10 a.m.

The cold and disruption from a winter storm in Texas caused some problems at Denver International Airport on Monday. Hundreds of flights were delayed throughout the day and 25 were canceled in total, putting Denver in second place on Flight Aware’s Misery Map.