Brutal cold snap stuns East Coast after blizzard

BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A shroud of bone-chilling arctic air covered the U.S. East Coast and Midwest on Saturday, creating dangerous conditions as tens of millions of people struggled to clean up from a blizzard that dumped deep, drifting snow in many areas earlier this week.

Wind chill and freeze warnings stretched from New England to Ohio and Pennsylvania, while the National Weather Service warned of freezing rain in Missouri and areas to the northeast.

In some of those places, exposed skin could freeze within 30 minutes, said meteorologist Dan Petersen of the National Weather Service’s Maryland-based Weather Prediction Center.

The cold snap complicated efforts by crews to clear snow and ice from roadways after the blizzard, which clobbered the Northeast after sprinkling snow in areas as far south as Savannah, Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida.

In New England and the Middle Atlantic states, the storm forced hundreds of schools to close and commuter rail services to suspend or reduce service.

Cold and snowy weather was blamed for at least 18 deaths in the past few days, including four in North Carolina traffic accidents and three in Texas.

In neighboring New Hampshire, the ambient air temperature on Mount Washington plunged to -36 F (minus 38C), two degrees short of a record low for Jan. 6. But sustained winds of 99 miles per hour (159 km/h) and gusts of up to 112 mph (180 km/h) atop the 6,200-foot (1,990-metre) peak made it feel more like minus 92 F (minus 69 Celsius), the NWS said.

The brutal cold in parts of the East Coast and Midwest shows no sign of abating this weekend, but a thaw should begin on Monday, said meteorologist Bob Oravec of the Weather Prediction Center. Before then, conditions will probably worsen.

Overnight, more than 30 cities from New England to the mid-Atlantic states could experience record cold, Petersen said. New York and Boston are among the big cities where records could fall.