Bone-Chilling Cold Sweeps U.S.; Utah's Same-Sex Marriage Halted; Obama's 2014 To-Do List; More Than 1,300 Flights Canceled Today
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, right now, the coldest temperatures in 20 years sweeping across the United States. Memphis, Tennessee, get this, colder than Anchorage, Alaska in Atlanta. Colder than Moscow. How dangerous are these bone-chilling temperatures? Right now, the Supreme Court calls a halt to same-sex marriages in Utah, at least temporarily. We're going to talk about what happens next and what this means for newly married same-sex couples in that state. And right now, President Obama is back here in Washington, D.C. with a long to-do list on his desk. At the top, fighting for jobless benefits and figuring out if he needs to fix the NSA. Just how big are the obstacles in his path? Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington. We start with a severe winter cold that's gripping much of the country. The snow, the ice and the brutally low temperatures, they've caused school closings from Minneapolis to Birmingham. Chicago, Cleveland and Kansas City, they're also among those cities with no school. This is what it looks like. Look at this, in Indianapolis, the city's travel warning at level red for the first time since the 1970s. That means no one is allowed to drive unless it's an emergency. Looking at the airports, more than 3,000 flights have been cancelled, and you can expect certainly that number to rise. We're covering all angles of the cold blast. Stephanie Elam joining us from Minneapolis. She is watching the Midwest. Victor Blackwell is monitoring the situation from the south. He's in Atlanta. Alexandria Steele is checking the forecast from our Severe Weather Center. And Renee Marsh is here in Washington, D.C. She's checking the nation's airports for us. Let's start with Stephanie though. Stephanie, the temperatures are well below zero. What is being done to reach a lot of these folks who may be in real danger from this weather?</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Wolf, it actually feels like it's getting colder here. It's really -- it doesn't take long for the shivers to start setting in. We've been out here for maybe about five, seven minutes now, and already you can start feeling the chill come in, even though we have on so many layers. And what they've been doing -- we talked to the police department. They said they've been out patrolling really looking for people who were in danger, who needed to get inside, taking them to hospitals, taking them to shelters, whatever they needed to do. They say crime has gone down a lot because it's just so cold. What they see more of are more domestic disputes because people are kind of caged up at home dealing with this. They're also very concerned about people driving here because if you're out, if there's any issue, if you don't have gas in your car, and you run out or if you don't have enough antifreeze, it is severe. It's so quick, Wolf, how cold. And you feel it so deeply. If you look at the river behind me, you can see where there's mainly frozen and there's a little bit of water going through where you can see, like, the steam coming off of you. You know it is cold when you can see that happening off a river outside. I know you're used to this, being from the northern climates, but it is very severely cold here and they continent don't want to take chances. They even shut down the zoo, because since all the schools are closed for the first time since anyone can remember for just cold, they want to make sure that families don't try to go do anything else because it's just too cold to be outside -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Yes, you better get inside, Stephanie. Thanks for that report. Let's check the situation in the south right now. Victor Blackwell is joining us from Atlanta. How prepared are folks in the south where they could also see some record low temperatures, Victor?</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a coat, gloves, and a hat is -- even with those, it's still hard to prepare for the temperatures we're seeing today and we'll see tomorrow. Atlanta public schools has decided that for the safety of their students and employees, they will close schools tomorrow on January 7th. We can also tell you that the city was prepared for black ice. Let's take a look at the roads. We're looking at I-75 and I-85 here where things are moving along smoothly. But there was this fear that overnight all of yesterday's rain would freeze, and there would be black ice over the roads today. The good thing is that the wind that came through that's also making it very cold, it dried the roads before temperatures dipped below freezing so no major concern for black ice. But right now, in the mid-20s, it feels like about 10 degrees. Tomorrow, the weather is forecast to be just as windy, with temperatures at about seven degrees. That would break a more than 40-year record and it would feel like 10 below zero this far south in the city of Atlanta -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: That's cold for any place especially someplace like Atlanta. Victor, thanks. Some parts of the United States could see a 60-degree temperature drop today. Alexandria Steele is monitoring the situation for us from the Severe Weather Center. Explain what's causing all of this, Alexandra.</s>ALEXANDRA STEELE, AMS METEOROLOGIST: All right. Well, Wolf, this is some rarified air. It's called the polar vortex, and it's air that normally circulates around the globe. The northern north pole. So, certainly the pole is not much farther south. But when the polar vortex gets weak, this kind of deep cold is allowed to drop into the northern hemisphere and that's a piece of what we're feeling. So, it's really the coldest air in the northern hemisphere hasn't been in this part of the woods. If you're younger than 40, you've never felt it before. So, we're going to watch this drop south, drop east. It'll modify some. But looking at these numbers, 44 below in Duluth. Just a few moments ago, it was at 50 below. When it gets that low, frostbite happens in five minutes; 35 below, frostbite happens in 10 minutes. And you know, in some of these cities like Indianapolis, there's no driving. Now, it's not because they don't want you to go anywhere. It's a combination of a few things. One, of course, the snow that has fallen, the cold temperatures, the winds, and say your car gets stuck. Motor oil freezes at 15. Antifreeze at 35 below. And even the tire seals will leak. So, you get out there, something happens to your car and then you're stuck in that life-threatening air. We're having that be called a PDS, something very rare. It's called a potentially dangerous situation because the air is so cold. All right, we're going to watch that cold not only in the upper Midwest. Today, Indianapolis, look at this, 46 degrees colder than normal. Nine below will be the high temperature. In Atlanta today, 30 degrees colder than average. The high of only 26 degrees. But watch what happens. The northeast has been enjoying kind of some pretty balmy weather. That front passes them today and temperatures there will cool off dramatically tonight. Current temperatures, much below average. And I'll talk about Atlanta and how low it's going to go and when coming up and how rare that is as well in the Deep South -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All Right. Alexandra, thanks very much. As you can imagine, the weather is making a mess of air travel today across the country. Thousands of flights already have been grounded because of the snow and the cold. Rene Marsh is joining us with more on this part of the story. So, how bad is it, today, Rene, for flyers?</s>RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Wolf, if you're one of those passengers and you are waiting to get on your flight and you just can't, it's pretty bad. Right now, the snapshot, it looks a little bit like this. More than 3,000 delays and nearly 3,500 cancellations. We want to drill down just a little bit and take a closer look as to what the situation looks like at specific airports. You can see Chicago, lots of red there. They're seeing so far, according to FlightAware's Misery Map, within this time frame from 10:00 this morning until 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, they've seen the most cancellations and delays. However, we want to put this in perspective for you. According to Mass Flight, which they collect lots of aviation data, they say on a normal day, you see about 200 cancellations, and 84 percent of the flights are on time. So, there's some perspective. But if you're at the airport, you're delayed or cancelled, you know that already. So, you want to know, what do I do if I'm delayed or cancelled? We have some tips for you. What the first thing you want to know is if you have your boarding pass in your hand, you want to go ahead and scan that boarding pass at the kiosk because a lot of times these airlines will automatically rebook you. So, you'll get this kind of information if you have been automatically rebooked. That's good to know before you stand on that line, very long lines, as we have seen in video. Also, if you want to have -- get information about your flight, tweet the airline. A lot of them are on social media and you will get a quick response. And then lastly, you know, this is a really good tip. All those people we saw sleeping on those ground -- on the ground there in the airport, what they recommend sometimes is buy a day pass to one of the lounges. You're a lot more comfortable. There is food. And they also have staff there. The lines are a lot shorter and you may get through a lot quicker. And just -- Wolf, just one bit of news that's coming into us right before we came up here. JetBlue. So, if you're on a JetBlue flight, you might want to know that the airline is telling CNN that they plan on reducing its operations totally by 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. They're just stopping operations. The reason they're doing this is because they want to bring things back up to speed, so this will be in place. They'll start bringing operations back tomorrow. They hope to be at 100 percent tomorrow. They're saying that flight rules, as far as rest rules for pilots, is playing into this as well -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, Rene, good information. Thanks very much. We'll have a lot more on the bitter cold weather and the impact it's having across the country. That's coming up later this hour. But there's another important story we're following. A significant decision by the United States Supreme Court just a little while ago. It's been a little more than two weeks since a judge allowed same-sex marriages to go ahead in Utah, but now the high court has put any new marriages in that state on hold. Our Justice Reporter Evan Perez is joining us now with more on this ruling, what it means. It's not a permanent ban, necessarily.</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: No, it's a temporary hold. And Justice Sotomayor kicked it over to the full Supreme Court, and they issued a ruling putting a temporary hold on this ruling from the -- from a -- from a district court judge in Denver, about 17 days ago, who allowed these marriages to go forward. Now, Utah voters passed a law back in 2004 that ruled that same-sex marriages were banned, were illegal. And in light of last year's Supreme Court ruling, this federal judge in December decided that that court ruling -- the federal court ruling essentially made the state law unconstitutional. And that's how this all came about.</s>BLITZER: What happens, Evan, to those couples that got married the last couple weeks in Utah when it was allowed?</s>PEREZ: Well, about 1,000 people, couples, same-sex couples, managed to get married in the 17 days that this ruling stood. Those people are still married. Legally. This ruling today only puts this on hold so that there are no more new licenses that are going to be issued in the state of Utah. But those people are still married. Now, we'll see what happens as the state goes through its appeals process and this -- you know, whether or not this becomes permanent or not.</s>BLITZER: So, it goes to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. They will make a decision. Potentially, though, it could go all the way up to the Supreme Court.</s>PEREZ: Right. Well, it all depends on what this -- the appeals court rules. If they decide that the judge in Denver was right, then this may not come back to the -- to the Supreme Court. We'll see. It does appear that there's a -- that there's enough of a majority on the Supreme Court, based on the rulings last year, allowing marriages, gay marriages in California to continue. And overturning the federal ban, that there might be enough that this could stand, if -- you know, depending on how the appeals court rules.</s>BLITZER: Even Perez, thanks very much. An important story out of Utah that we're watching. Other news we're watching including Liz Cheney. She's now bowing out of a contentious race. It's a story you saw first here on CNN. She's dropping her Senate bid for family reasons. We're about to take a closer look at her campaign, what it meant for the Republican Party. Stay with us.