March Comes In Like A Lion (Or Maybe Like a Kick In The Groin)

DES MOINES, IA — March didn’t just come in like a lion in the Midwest. It came in angry and growling, like a lion with a migrane headache. Usually winter-hardy Midwesterners have had enough. They include — but most certainly aren’t limited to — Keith Murphy, the sports director at a Des Moines television station who showed his frigid weather frustration in an on-air stunt Sunday.

Just as WHO-TV Chief Meteorologist Ed Wilson was telling viewers they would awake Monday to frigid temperatures and more snow on top of a thick layer of ice, the usually affable Murphy walked onto the set, shouted “Enough!” and then mock-kicked Wilson where it hurts a man the most.

The comments, memes and gifs on Facebook have been pretty hilarious.

One meme claims “this is no longer winter,” but “freakin’ harassment.” Another claims “it’s like winter is mad and keeps storming out, then coming back in yelling, ‘and another thing.’ ” And a gif featuring Bill Murray as his “Groundhog Day” character is saying what Midwesterners fear in real life: This winter will never, ever end.

So far, March is looking a lot like January and February from the Rockies to the Northeast. A late winter storm dumped about a foot of snow on a large swath of New England overnight Sunday into Monday morning, leaving thousands without power, closing schools and slowing the morning commute to a crawl.

Areas west and south of Boston received 16 inches of snow; Pomfret, Connecticut, got 16 ½ inches; and Burrillville, Rhode Island, got 17 inches. New York City only got about 5 inches of slushy snow, but it was still enough for Mayor Bill de Blasio to close schools and suspend alternate-side street parking.

An Arctic blast o cold air brought dangerous wind chill temperatures to much of the nation’s midsection. Dangerously cold wind chill temperatures of 40 and 30 degrees below zero were typical in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest, closing multiple schools.

Sunday morning’s low, -13 degrees Fahrenheit, at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport tied a record for March 3 set in 1873, the National Weather Service said. Monday morning’s low of -3 degrees was only the 17th subzero temperature in March since 1871, the National Weather Service said.

In Des Moines, where the sports director and meteorologist got into their mock fight over winter, the temperature never made it out of the single digits on Sunday and the high Monday was predicted to be about 10 degrees.

In the Southeast, tornadoes tore through Alabama and Georgia, causing at least 23 deaths.

The Associated Press contributed reporting