First Posted: 2/16/2015
Winter was out in full force again across Ohio.
Cities throughout northern Ohio woke up to historic low temperatures on Monday while a snowstorm swept through the southern part of the state later in the day.
Cleveland, Toledo, Youngstown and Mansfield all registered record lows for the date.
Cleveland’s Hopkins Airport reported a reading of 10 below, breaking the record set 111 years ago of minus 8 degrees in 1904.
Toledo’s low on Monday broke the record set in 1963. The temperature at Toledo Express Airport bottomed out at 9 below just before 6 a.m. Monday, beating the previous low by one degree.
Driving was perilous around Cincinnati where snow on Monday led to numerous accidents on the interstates. While the snow was much heavier in northern Kentucky, areas of southern Ohio saw several inches of snow.
Both Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati canceled classes Monday because of the weather. The Cincinnati Zoo also closed early.
The cold snap, meanwhile, has almost all of Lake Erie covered by ice, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Ice has formed across close to 94 percent of the lake, the highest percentage out of all of the Great Lakes.
The lake reached 100 percent ice coverage only three times since records have been kept, the Northeast Ohio Media Group (http://bit.ly/1L4ADDT) in Cleveland reported.
The most recent time the entire lake was iced over came in 1996.
