WSJ.com: “An Arctic blast swept across a large swath of the U.S. on Monday, sending temperatures plunging from Minnesota to Florida and bringing a bone-chilling start to the first workweek of the year…Temperatures fell below zero from the Great Plains to the Northeast, following a weekend of heavy snow. The reading of minus-16 degrees in St. Joseph, Mo., Monday marked the city’s coldest Jan. 4 since 1947, while minus-37 in International Falls, Minn., Sunday was the coldest there since 1911, said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. Dallas, Jacksonville, Fla., and Little Rock, Ark., fell nearly 20 degrees below their average temperatures for this time of year on Monday, he said. The cold snap is one of the nation’s most widespread since January 1985, according to meteorologists at Accuweather.com. While the cold is expected to ease slightly starting Thursday, this winter is on track to be one of the coldest in the past decade or two, said Ken Reeves, director of forecasting operations at Accuweather.com”