By RUSS BYNUM and KRISTIN M. HALL Associated Press
When a massive winter storm descended on the Northeast and parts of the South over the weekend, Lisa Patterson planned to stick it out at her family’s home in Nashville.
But after she and her husband lost power, trees fell onto their driveway and their wood stove proved no match for the frigid temperatures. Along with their dog, the couple had to be rescued and taken to a warming shelter.
“I’ve been snowed in up there for almost three weeks without being able to get up and down my driveway because of the snow. I’m prepared for that. But this was unprecedented,” Patterson said.
The family was among many across Tennessee and other parts of the South that have fled to warming shelters as crews worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of households in the face of a new influx of arctic air expected to spur freezing temperatures Tuesday in places already covered in snow and ice.
At least 35 deaths have been reported in states afflicted with severe cold.
Three brothers ages 6, 8 and 9 died Monday after falling through ice on a private pond near Bonham, Texas, said Fannin County Sheriff Cody Shook in a news release Tuesday. The two older boys were pulled from the water by first responders and a neighbor then taken to a hospital, while the youngest was recovered after an extensive search of the pond. Bonham Independent School District said it was devastated by the loss.
Two people were run over by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, fatal sledding killed teenagers in Arkansas and Texas, and a woman’s body was found covered in snow in Kansas. In New York City, officials said eight people were found dead outdoors over the frigid weekend.
The National Weather Service had warnings for extreme, dangerous cold in effect Tuesday morning from Texas to Pennsylvania, where some areas were forecast to see wind chills as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius). Much of the U.S. wasn’t forecast to get above freezing all day Tuesday, with temperatures plunging again overnight. Thermometers in northern Florida were forecast to sink to 25 F (minus 3.9 C) late Tuesday into early Wednesday.
The brutal cold lingered after storms over the weekend and Monday dumped deep snow across more than 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) from Arkansas to New England and left parts of the South coated in treacherous ice.
In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear warned that the temperatures could become so frigid that as little as 10 minutes outside “could result in frostbite or hypothermia.”
And forecasters said it’s possible another winter storm could hit parts of the East Coast this weekend.
There were still 550,000 power outages in the nation Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.com. Most of them were in the South, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days for power to be restored.
In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday at least 14 homes and 20 public roads had major damage in the aftermath of the state’s worst ice storm since 1994. The University of Mississippi canceled classes for the entire week as its Oxford campus remained coated in treacherous ice.
New York City saw its snowiest day in years, with neighborhoods recording 8 to 15 inches (20 to 38 centimeters) of snow, forcing the nation’s largest public school system to shut down.
In Nashville, Nathan Hoffner sent his 4-year-old son to stay with his son’s mother after his rental house in lost power midday Sunday. He and his roommate layered up with clothes and several blankets overnight and by the next morning the temperature inside the home had dropped dramatically.
“I saw my breath in the house,” Hoffner said.
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This story has been updated to correct that the boys in Texas died Monday, not Sunday.
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia, and Hall from Nashville, Tennessee. Associated Press writers around the country contributed.