Blizzard causes chaos for candidates in Iowa: Republicans cancel events and brace for coldest caucus in decades with lows of MINUS ELF degrees for voting on Monday

One week to go until the Iowa caucuses and January weather has wreaked havoc on Republican presidential campaign planning.

Winter Storm Finn began dumping snow on western Iowa overnight Monday, with a planned morning meet-and-greet with Nikki Haley at Horizon Restaurant in Sioux City the first major casualty of the day — a move rival Vivek Ramaswamy mocked.

With former President Donald Trump back in Florida — then headed to D.C. to appear in court Tuesday — his campaign planned to blanket the state with surrogate appearances on Monday and Tuesday.

But thanks to bad weather, the father-daughter team of Mike Huckabee and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders pulled out of Team Trump events on Monday, while sitcom star Roseanne Barr, who was scheduled to campaign for Trump on Tuesday, got stuck in Hawaii .

In addition to the snowstorm, which is expected to drop between 6 and 12 inches of snow in some parts of the Hawkeye State, forecasts for Monday's caucuses could be the coldest on record.

In Des Moines, a high of 5 degrees is expected, while the low is currently expected to reach negative 11.

Caucuses are physical gatherings that require voters to line up at their caucus locations promptly at 7:00 PM to attend.

That means caucus turnout could really be affected by bad weather.

“The usual concern for the caucus — aside from cars not starting because of the cold temperatures or the babysitter not showing up for the same reason — is what we have projected for this afternoon through tomorrow morning: a snowstorm,” says political science professor from Drake University. Goldford told DailyMail.com.

Goldford noted that the snow is expected to clear by caucus time Monday, “but with Iowa weather, anything can happen.”

Goldford and fellow Drake University professor Hugh Winebrenner co-authored The Iowa Precinct Caucuses: The Making of a Media Event, which described how on caucus night in 1972, “Iowa was under siege by a fierce winter storm.”

The January 24, 1972 Democratic caucus was the first of modern times and became the nation's first primary.

That year, temperatures at Des Moines International Airport dropped to minus 4 degrees.

That was the lowest temperature on record for caucus night, according to figures given to DailyMail.com by Justin Glisan, Iowa's state climatologist.

In about a quarter of Iowa's 99 counties, the 1972 caucuses were postponed by a day, and in some cases by two days, the book said.

There was also snow in 1992 for the caucuses and cold temperatures in 2004. The low in 2004 fell to 2 degrees, the second lowest.

In 2008 the minimum was 4 degrees.

In 2016 and 2020 — when the caucuses were held in early February instead of January — the weather behaved.

Candidates and surrogates have already predicted that the frigid weather will actually help their cause.

At his campaign rally in Clinton, Iowa, Saturday evening, Trump said he ran into Iowa state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann backstage, who told the ex-president it would be a “good thing” for him that it was expected to be cold.

'Why is that good? Because the other side will never vote, because they have no enthusiasm,” Trump said.

“We will not lose a vote because our people will, as they use the term, walk on glass. They won't stay away. They're going to walk on glass,” he added to cheers from the crowd.

At a campaign event Sunday afternoon for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his surrogate representative Thomas Massie predicted the cold would be good for DeSantis.

“I think it's working in our favor again,” Massie told DailyMail.com. “I think our supporters are more committed and I think the other candidates have a kind of astroturf support that will be killed or frozen by zero degree weather.”

DeSantis opened the event in Grimes, Iowa on Sunday at McDivot's Indoor Sports Pub by joking that he personally wasn't prepared.

“I started bragging a bit because I was like 35 degrees, honestly, I can deal with that, no problem, I can – and then it got a little bit colder today. And then I looked at the weather forecast for caucus night,” DeSantis said with a laugh.

“I need to go shopping and buy some extra layers. I don't have that stuff,” the Florida governor said.

Despite Monday's snowfall, Ramaswamy said he planned to still make his campaign stops in Iowa, including in Sioux City, where several inches of snow were already clinging to the ground.

About 40 to 50 potential supporters ultimately attended, a campaign spokesman said.

“You know campaigns are canceling events these days, not us. We have multiple events planned in northwest Iowa, we are keeping them intact. If you can't handle the snow, you can't handle Xi Jinping,” Ramaswamy said in a video taken on his campaign bus en route to western Iowa.

“I know Nikki Haley and others couldn't handle it. Well, let them do it their way, we'll do it our way,” he continued.

“Let's hurry up,” Ramaswamy said, adding at his event in Sioux City that the candidates who canceled were like a “withering flower.”

Ramaswamy also predicted that the frigid weather on Monday would give him a caucus advantage.

'Look, what do we know? People come out a little less when they are cold,” Ramaswamy told reporters. 'I think it will work in our favour. Many of my supporters are not lukewarm supporters. The people who support me support me because they believe in the vision I offer for this country, not because they are just catching the mainstream media's narrative about how this race will go.”

Ramaswamy, who is 38 years old, said he expected many new caucusgoers to come.

“I think the Ramaswamy tsunami will not be deterred by the cold weather,” he said.