ATLANTA — Fountains froze over, a 200-foot Ferris wheel in Atlanta shut down, and Southerners had to dig out winter coats, hats and gloves they almost never have to use.
The brutal polar air that has made the Midwest shiver over the past few days spread to the East and the Deep South on Tuesday, shattering records that in some cases had stood for more than a century.
The mercury plunged into the single digits and teens from Boston and New York to Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville and Little Rock.
“I didn’t think the South got this cold,” said Marty Williams, a homeless man, originally from Chicago, who took shelter at a church in Atlanta, where it hit a record low of 6 degrees. “That was the main reason for me to come down from up North, from the cold, to get away from all that stuff.”
All 50 states saw freezing temperatures at some point Tuesday. That included Hawaii, where it was 18 degrees atop Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano. Oklahoma and Texas saw record-setting cold, with wind chills — a calculation that describes the com- bined effect of wind and cold temperatures on exposed skin — of 40 below zero.
The cold turned deadly for some: Authorities reported at least 21 cold-related deaths across the country since Sunday, including seven in Illinois and six in Indiana. At least five people died after collapsing while shoveling snow, and several victims were identified as homeless people who either refused shelter or didn’t make it to a warm haven soon enough.
In Missouri on Monday, a 1-year-old boy was killed when the car he was riding in struck a snowplow, and a 20-year-old woman was killed in a separate crash after her car slid on ice and into the path of a tractor-trailer.
The big chill started in the Midwest over the weekend, caused by a kink in the “polar vortex,” the strong winds that circulate around the North Pole. By Tuesday, the icy air covered about half the country, and records were shattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
“Today is a brutal day, and there is no way around it,” said Tom Kines, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pa. “One of my colleagues pointed out to me that the South Pole this morning is 6 below. That means places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, all those places are colder than the South Pole.”
Western New York, which was hit with 18 inches of snow Tuesday and 50 mph winds, saw wind chills dip to minus 33 degrees Tuesday, said Brian Hoeth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. Western Pennsylvania registered a wind chill of minus 28 degrees.
“That’s the worst area of the country right now,” Hoeth said.
It was 1 degree in Reading, Pa., and 2 in Trenton, N.J. New York City plummeted to 4 degrees. The city’s old record for the date was 6, set in 1896.
“It’s brutal out here,” said Spunkiy Jon, who took a break from her sanitation job in New York to smoke a cigarette in the cab of a garbage truck. “Your fingers freeze off after three minutes, your cheeks feel as if you’re going to get windburn, and you work as quick as you can.”
Farther south, Birmingham, Ala., dipped to a low of 7, four degrees colder than the old mark, set in 1970. Huntsville, Ala., dropped to 5, Nashville, Tenn., got down to 2, and Little Rock fell to 9. Charlotte, N.C., reached 6 degrees, breaking the 12-degree record that had stood since 1884.
The deep freeze dragged on in the Midwest as well, with the thermometer reaching minus 12 overnight in the Chicago area and 14 below zero in suburban St. Louis. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence issued disaster declarations.
More than 500 Amtrak passengers were stranded overnight on three Chicago-bound trains that were stopped by blowing and drifting snow in Illinois. Food ran low, but the heat stayed on.
The worst should be over in the next day or two, forecasters said, when the polar vortex is expected to straighten itself out. Warmer weather — that is, near or above freezing — is in the forecast for much of the stricken part of the country.
On Tuesday, many schools and day-care centers across the eastern half of the U.S. were closed so youngsters wouldn’t be exposed to the dangerous cold. Officials opened shelters for the homeless and anyone else who needed a warm place.
Chicago Public Schools, the third largest U.S. district, closed for a second day in a row because of cold weather, according to a system statement. Schools will probably open today for the city’s 400,000 students if temperatures rise.
With the bitter cold slowing baggage handling and aircraft refueling, airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights in the U.S., bringing the fourday total to more than 11,000.
In New Orleans, which reported a low of 26 degrees, hardware stores ran out of pipe insulation. A pipe burst in an Atlanta suburb and a main road quickly froze over. In downtown Atlanta, a Ferris wheel near Centennial Olympic Park that opened over the summer to give riders a bird’s eye view of the city closed because it was too cold.
Farther south in Pensacola, Fla., a Gulf Coast city better known for its white sand beaches than frost, streets were deserted early Tuesday. A sign on a bank flashed 19 degrees.
Monica Anderson and Tommy Howard jumped up and down and blew on their hands while they waited for a bus. Anderson said she couldn’t recall it ever being so cold.
“I’m not used to it. It is best just to stay inside until it gets better,” said Anderson, who had to get out for a doctor’s appointment.
“It’s amazing, the only part of the U.S. east of the Mississippi that’s above freezing is the southern two-thirds of Florida,” said Bruce Terry, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md. “Today is the coldest day for a large chunk of the U.S.”
The Lower 48 states, when averaged out, reached a low of 13.8 degrees overnight Monday, according to calculations by Ryan Maue of Weather Bell Analytics. An estimated 190 million people in the U.S. were subjected to the polar vortex’s icy blast.
PJM Interconnection, which operates the power grid that serves more than 61 million people in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South, asked users to conserve electricity because of the cold, especially in the morning and late afternoon.
Across the South, the Tennessee Valley Authority said power demand in the morning reached the second-highest winter peak in the history of the Depression-era utility. Temperatures averaged 4 degrees across the utility’s seven-state region.
In South Carolina, a large utility used 15-minute rolling blackouts to handle demand, but there were no reports of widespread power failures in the South.
Natural-gas demand in the U.S. set a record Tuesday, eclipsing the mark set a day earlier, said Jack Weixel, director of energy analysis at Bentek Energy.
Exxon Mobil Corp. and Valero Energy Corp. had failures at refineries in Illinois and Tennessee because of cold temperatures, according to separate filings with the U.S. National Response Center. PBF Energy Inc.’s Paulsboro, New Jersey, refinery lost power and Marathon Petroleum Corp. shut several units at its Detroit plant because of extreme cold.
In Kentucky, authorities said it was apparently cold enough for an escaped prisoner to decide to turn himself in.
Authorities said the inmate escaped from a minimum security facility in Lexington on Sunday. As temperatures dropped into the low single digits Monday, officials said, the man walked into a motel and asked the clerk to call police.
Robert Vick, 42, of Hartford told the clerk he wanted to turn himself in and escape the arctic air, Lexington police spokesman Sherelle Roberts said.
Vick was checked out by paramedics and returned to Blackburn Correctional Complex, Roberts said.
In Chicago, it was too cold even for the polar bear at the Lincoln Park Zoo. While polar bears can handle below-zero cold in the wild, Anana was kept inside Monday because she doesn’t have the thick layer of fat that bears typically develop from feeding on seals and whale carcasses, zoo spokesman Sharon Dewar said.
That extra insulation would make it uncomfortable to live in Chicago during the rest of the year, so Anana gets a different diet.
Information for this article was contributed by Ray Henry, Steve Karnowski, Amy Forliti, David Dishneau, Brett Zongker, Brett Barrouquere, Melissa Nelson-Gabriel, Suzette Laboy, Verena Dobnik, Kelly P. Kissel and staff members of The Associated Press; by Brian K. Sullivan, Naureen S. Malik, Freeman Klopott, Tim Catts, Jim Polson, Harry R. Weber, Pratish Narayanan, Ramsey Al-Rikabi and Claudia Carpenter of Bloomberg News; and by Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Hugo Martin of the Los Angeles Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/08/2014