MEMPHIS (AP) – Memphis residents were urged to boil water and New Yorkers have been warned that roads could be covered with dangerous black ice this weekend as brutal cold and inclement weather continue to sweep across parts of the United States (US).
Bitterly frigid air spilled into the Midwest from Canada on Friday and several states were under advisories as forecasters warned that wind chills dipping to minus 34 degrees celsius (°C) could be common until today.
Heavier-than-forecast snow fell in New York City, Baltimore and Washington DC on Friday. Storms have walloped the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, Plains, South and Northeast with low temperatures, heavy snow, ice storms, freezing rain and high winds for the past two weeks.
With a wind chill, temperatures are expected to drop as low as 26°C in large portions of Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Kansas, the National Weather Service predicted.
The bracing weekend weather follows a series of storms blamed for at least 55 deaths around the country, many of them involving hypothermia or road accidents.
Tennessee recorded 19 deaths alone. They included a 25-year-old man who was found dead on the floor of a mobile home in Lewisburg after a space heater overturned and turned off, said Chief Deputy of the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office, Bob Johnson.
“There was ice on the walls in there,” Johnson said.
Days of cold broke so many water mains in Memphis, Tennessee, that water pressure fell throughout the city. On Friday, Memphis Light, Gas and Water urged all of its more than 400,000 residents to boil water for drinking or teeth brushing or use bottled supplies.
In West Virginia, advisories and warnings were out yesterday because of continued fierce weather. The weather service said some regions could see up to four inches of additional snow with winds gusting to 40 miles per hour and wind chill driving down temperatures as low as minus 29°C.
In Washington DC, snow fell softly and the streets around the US Capitol were silent. Schools closed for the second time in a week and the federal government was on a two-hour delay.
