Donald Trump’s inauguration moved indoors due to ‘dangerous’ cold

President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural address on 20 January will take place indoors due to dangerously cold weather being forecast next week in Washington, he has confirmed.

The address, as well as other speeches, will now take place inside the US Capitol’s rotunda, rather than outside the building.

The inaugural parade will also be held indoors at Washington’s Capital One Arena in downtown Washington about one mile (1.6km) away, along with all three inaugural balls.

The last president to be sworn-in indoors was Ronald Reagan in 1985, when cold weather also plagued the US Capitol.

In a statement posted to his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said that he does not “want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way” amid the freezing temperatures.

“It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of law enforcement, first responders, police K9s and even horses” as well as “hundreds of thousands” of supporters.

“In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly,” he added.

The Capital One Arena will also be open for a live viewing of the inaugural address.

BBC Weather: Inauguration Day may be one of the coldest in US history

Trump – who has a rally planned there on Sunday – said he would visit the arena after being sworn-in at the Capitol.

A planned parade will now take place in a modified form. It is unclear whether it will now take place inside.

Extreme cold has been forecast in Washington DC on inauguration day, with temperatures expected to hit a low of -11C (12F) and a high of -5C (23F). With wind chill factored in, the temperature will feel significantly colder.

The weather forms part of a larger polar vortex that will send temperatures plummeting across the US.

“Everyone will be safe, everyone will be happy, and we will, together, Make America Great Again,” Trump wrote.

Ahead of the inauguration, organisers had said that about 220,000 tickets would be distributed to watch the event’s on the grounds of the US Capitol.

Those without tickets would also have been able to view the ceremonies on the National Mall.

Alternate plans will now be required for those visitors, as well as the tens of thousands of others expected in the city.

Trump said that other inaugural events, including his rally on Sunday and three separate official inaugural balls on Monday evening, would take place as planned.

The move indoors means a much more limited capacity at Monday’s swearing-in for Trump, who is known to closely track attendance figures at his public events.

After his first inauguration, he claimed a “million and half people” had attended on the National Mall.

But crowd-size experts said the numbers were about a third of the estimated 800,000 to one million people who attended Barack Obama’s one in 2009.

Only about 1,000 people attended Joe Biden’s inauguration on the Capitol grounds because of Covid-19 restrictions.

In 1841, then-President William Henry Harrison, 68, gave the longest inauguration speech in US history in cold, wet conditions.

He caught a cold and subsequently pneumonia, and died exactly one month later, making his presidency the shortest in US history.