BALTIMORE — You just have to hold on one more day before a warm up this week. But we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
WATCH: One more day before a warmup
Monday is expected to begin with a dangerously cold start after wind chill is expected to be in negatives to single digits overnight.
Meaning if you have to be outside for an extended period of time, like waiting at the bus stop, health experts urge you and your children to layer up, warning about frostbite doesn’t take that long to settle in.
“It's important for people to know the smaller you are, or if you already have a chronic medical condition, the faster it can happen,” Dr. Megan Cobb, with the University of Maryland school of medicine emergency pediatric emergency department. “If you're a normal sized adult, roughly, it's gonna be about 20-30 minutes.”
If you do happen to experience frostbite, which begins with fingers and toes going numb, Dr. Cobbs reminds you to not rub them together or it could make the injury worse.
“You want to start the rewarming as soon as you possibly can. The best way to rewarm frostbitten injuries is to use warm, not hot, but warm running water or warm circulating water,” she said.
High winds cause power problems
The winter weather is going out with a big blowout this weekend, as high winds knocked down power lines and tree limbs leaving thousands without power.
BGE reports it restored more than 22,000 customers’ power over the weekend. As of Sunday night, a little more than 120 customers were reported to be without power.
“I think this is really a testament to the ongoing investments that we're making in the electric system to enhances safety and reliability for our customers,” BGE Communications Manager Stephanie Weaver said.
The company has been working year-round to improve the resiliency in the face of bad weather, Weaver explained, from relocating equipment underground in select areas, to vegetation management and the expansion of distribution automation equipment.
“[They] automatically detect, isolate, and in many cases restore outages. We saw this come into play on Saturday in many different instances. This technology currently prevents 1.5 million and 2 million customer outages each year,” Weaver said.
READ MORE: BGE issues cold weather safety tips as arctic blast and high winds move in
The anticipated warm-up is a huge relief after weeks of brutal winter weather. But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. Once the snow really starts meting, you’ll have to keep an eye out for falling ice, water main breaks and re-freezing on the roads.