Trump says he'll take inauguration oath indoors Monday due to cold temperatures
An indoor inauguration is rare, but not unprecedented
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office from inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday due to forecasts of intense cold weather.
"The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
"There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don't want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way."
The Rotunda is prepared as the alternative for each inauguration in the event of inclement weather. The swearing-in was last moved indoors in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan began his second term.
"The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies will honour the request of the president-elect and his Presidential Inaugural Committee to move the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies inside the U.S. Capitol to the Rotunda," a spokesperson said Friday.
The National Weather Service is predicting the temperature to be around 22 F (–6 C) at noon during the swearing-in. That's about 4 C colder than for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Barack Obama in 2009, according to NWS historical data, but not quite as cold as for John F. Kennedy in 1961.
The winds for Monday are forecast to range from 16 km/h to 32 km/h.
Alternate plans are required for the more roughly 250,000 guests ticketed to view the inauguration from around the Capitol grounds and the tens of thousands more expected to be in general admission areas or to line the inaugural parade route from the Capitol to the White House.
Trump said some supporters would be able to watch the ceremony from Washington's Capital One Arena on Monday, a day after he plans to hold a rally there. He said he would visit the arena, which has a capacity of about 20,000, after his swearing-in, and host a modified inaugural parade there.
Trump said other inaugural events, including the Sunday rally and his participation in three official inaugural balls on Monday night, would take place as scheduled.
Matt McCool, a Secret Service spokesperson, said last week that the agency would be "flexible and adaptable."
The Secret Service has come in for criticism over the past six months after Trump was shot at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, followed by an incident weeks later when a gunman was located on the grounds of a Florida golf course while Trump played hundreds of metres away.
Trump's first inauguration saw the president and his first press secretary Sean Spicer exaggerate the size of the crowds. When asked about Spicer's claim, Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway then infamously stated in an interview that Spicer "gave alternative facts."
With files from CBC News