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Costas Katemis of Revere, Mass., warms his hands while selling fruit on the street in Boston, where the National Weather Service said it didn't get above 17 degrees on Wednesday.Michael Dwyer/ASSOCIATED PRESS Visit the Photo Place |
Date published: 1/24/2013
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Maine
--A teeth-chattering cold wave with subzero temperatures is expected to keep its icy grip on much of the eastern U.S. into the weekend before seasonable temperatures bring relief.A polar air mass blamed for multiple deaths in the Midwest moved into the Northeast on Wednesday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue wind chill warnings across upstate New York and northern New England and creating problems for people still trying to rebound from Superstorm Sandy.
In a storm-damaged neighborhood near the beach on New York City's Staten Island, people who haven't had heat in their homes since the late October storm took refuge in tents set up by aid workers. The tents were equipped with propane heaters, which were barely keeping up with the cold, and workers were providing sleeping bags and blankets for warmth.
Eddie Saman is sleeping in one of the tents because the gaping hole in the roof of his home has rendered it uninhabitable. Heat has been restored to the house, but much of it escapes through the hole.
"It's very cold," Saman said, "and mainly I sleep here next to the heater."
In northern New Hampshire, a man who crashed his snowmobile while going over a hill on Tuesday and spent a "bitterly cold night" injured and alone on a trail died on Wednesday, the state's Fish and Game Department said. Friends who went looking for John Arsenault, of Shelburne, when he didn't show up for work found him unconscious Wednesday morning, and he died later at a hospital, authorities said.
The Canadian air mass that arrived in the Upper Midwest over the weekend forced schools to close, delayed commuter trains and subways and kept plumbers busy with frozen pipes. In Pennsylvania, officials at a park on Lake Erie warned visitors to stay off hollow "ice dunes" forming along the shore because of the danger of frigid water underneath. A ski resort in New Hampshire shut down Wednesday because of unsafe ski conditions: a predicted wind chill of 48 degrees below zero.
The coldest temperatures were expected Wednesday and today, after which conditions should slowly moderate before returning to normal, said John Koch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service regional headquarters in Bohemia, N.Y. For the most part, temperatures have been around 10 to 15 degrees below normal, with windy conditions making it feel colder, he said.