Photo by Eric Purcell

On one of the coldest days on record in decades, a Fairfax woman gave birth in an SUV this morning.

According to Fairfax County police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell, who first posted about the incident on Facebook, police received a “frantic” 911 call a little after 6 a.m. this morning from a man who didn’t speak much english saying that he needed help. “There was a language issue, so they weren’t exactly 100 percent sure what the issue was,” she says. When the first responding officer arrived, what he found surprised him: A woman had given birth to a baby on the way to the hospital.

A paramedic arrived shortly after the SUV’s location, near the intersection of Nutley Street and Virginia Center Boulevard and transported the woman and her baby to a nearby hospital. Caldwell says that the officer reported that “things appeared to be calm” when he arrived, and that it was a “healthy looking infant” bundled in blankets with the heat blasting in the SUV.

“The responding officer has been on the force for 21 years,” Caldwell says “and this is the first time he’s seen anything like this.” There you have it, the region’s first polar vortex baby has been born (that we know of).

Update: And here’s a picture of the baby girl born this morning!