Washington, Jan 12 (IANS) A brutal Arctic blast in the US is expected to plunge temperatures to as low as 20 to 30 degrees below zero in the northern Plains on Friday and Saturday night.

As a result, more than 15 million people in the central US are under wind chill alerts where frostbite could occur in as little as 10 minutes on exposed skin, reports CNN.

The cold will spread south and east across the country and eventually envelop Texas and other parts of the South by the weekend, lasting into the middle of next week.

Afternoon high temperatures on Friday will likely fail to reach zero degrees across much of Montana and North Dakota.

High temperatures in the single digits and 10s will then spread east into parts of the central Plains and Midwest.

During the weekend, the coldest air will stretch from Denver to Indianapolis, with temperatures at least 30 degrees below normal.

ERCOT, Texas’s power grid, has issued a weather watch for January 14, warning of the impending surge in electricity demand and a potential dip in reserves, reports CNN.

On Thursday, ERCOT said there was expected to be enough power to avoid outages.

More than 200 people died -- most of them from hypothermia --during a historic bout of cold and an ice storm in February 2021.