Four people have died in the US as the blast of Arctic air called a "polar vortex" brought the coldest temperatures in two decades to the centre of the country.
The cold air is now moving towards the east coast, where temperatures are expected to fall on Tuesday - as far south as Texas and Florida. The National Weather Service warned of "dangerously cold wind chills" across the eastern seaboard.
New York's governor declared a state of emergency, announcing that parts of the New York State Thruway in Western New York would be closed due to extreme winter weather conditions there. Eastern Canada will also be affected.
PJM Interconnection, which operates the power grid supplying energy to more than 61 million people in parts of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South, has asked users to conserve electricity on Tuesday because of the cold, especially in the morning and late afternoon.
Temperatures were colder than usual by between 20 and 40F (11 to 22C) across Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nebraska on Monday.
The coldest part of the country was Babbitt, Minnesota, where temperatures of -37F (-38.3C) were recorded.
Many pointed out that this was colder than the spot on Mars from which the Curiosity rover sent back a reading of -32.8F (-36C) on 2 January.
In Chicago, where flights were cancelled as fuel supplies froze, the temperature dropped to -16F (-27C). In Fort Wayne, Indiana, it was -13F (-15C). More than 30,000 people in the state were without power late Monday night, with utility crews working to restore electricity. In state capital Indianapolis, mayor Greg Ballard told schools and businesses to remain closed for another day, saying: "The cold is the real killer here. In 10 minutes you could be dead without the proper clothes."
The four deaths reported on Monday included a 48-year-old Chicago man who had a heart attack while shoveling snow on Sunday and an elderly woman who was found outside her Indianapolis home early on Monday
Businesses and schools were closed on Monday and thousands of flights cancelled. Grain and livestock shipments have been disrupted throughout the central and midwestern "farm belt" region.
Reuters reported that homeless shelters were "overflowing" due to the extreme cold.
Temperatures in the centre of the country are expected to begin a "slow moderation", the National Weather Service said.
The polar vortex - called the polar pig by some - is a persistent area of low pressure, moving anti-clockwise above the north pole, which sucks warm air up from the south. As you can see in this interactive, fluctuations in the jet stream have led to its pushing cold air much further south than usual, leading to this week's bitterly cold conditions.
Chicago and Lake Michigan on Monday. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters
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