MEMPHIS, Tenn. >> Arctic weather brought more misery to much of the U.S. today, especially for people unaccustomed to such bitter cold in places like Memphis, Tennessee, where residents were urged to boil water and some had no water at all after freezing temperatures broke water mains across the city. Temperatures weren’t expected to rise until after the weekend.
At the Four Way Grill in Memphis, owner Patrice Bates Thompson said the water problems have closed their soul food kitchen for days.
“This is our staple, and this is what basically drives the force of my family financially,” Thompson told Fox-13 Memphis. “We depend on business, and we have been at home.”
So many water mains broke in Memphis that water pressure fell throughout the city. On Friday, Memphis Light, Gas & Water urged all of its more than 400,000 customers to boil water for drinking or teeth-brushing or use bottled supplies. While some 50 ruptures were repaired, utility President Doug McGowen warned of new leaks emerging. The utility was asking residents to report leaks at homes and unoccupied buildings to help them restore pressure.
A huge swath of the U.S. was under a wind chill advisory, from parts of Montana all the way into central Florida. It was particularly harsh in the Midwest. The wind made it feel like minus 16 degrees (minus 26 Celsius) in Iowa City today, and overnight wind chills hovered around zero in Oklahoma City, where David Overholser sought shelter at the non-profit Homeless Alliance.
“Being 63 and from Florida originally, I don’t like cold. I can’t handle it,” Overholser told The Oklahoman. “It’s been very, very rough and painful and I just, you know, try to hang on one day, one hour at a time … it’s definitely scary.”
Wind chills dipped to minus 20 Fahrenheit (minus 28 Celsius) early today in Vermont, where the Stowe Mountain Resort urged hardy skiers to be cautious.
“Bust out all the stuff you need to hang on the mountain safely, take frequent warm up breaks inside, and keep a close eye on each other for signs of frostbite,” the resort warned on its website.
In West Virginia, the weather service said some regions could see up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of additional snow today, with winds gusting to 40 mph (64 kph) and wind chill driving down temperatures as low as 20 below zero (minus 29 C).
And in upstate New York, snow-shovelers answered another call by the Buffalo Bills to clear Highmark Stadium for Sunday’s divisional round playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs after the city was smothered by five feet of snow in five days.
Snow was tapering off in other parts of the Northeast after blanketing a large area including Washington and New York City. Since Friday, The National Weather Service reported 7 inches of snow in Dover, Delaware, 6 inches in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and about 4 or 5 inches in much of eastern Pennsylvania.
“It might seem weird after the warm winter we were having up until a week ago, but we’ve actually caught up to near normal snowfall to this point in the season for much of our region,” a weather service statement said.
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 alone recorded 19 deaths, including a 25-year-old man found dead on the floor of a mobile home in Lewisburg after a space heater overturned and turned off, said Bob Johnson, chief deputy for the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office.
“There was ice on the walls in there,” Johnson said.
On the West Coast, more freezing rain was forecast today in the Columbia River Gorge and the area was expected to remain near or below freezing through at least Sunday night. Trees and power lines already coated with ice could topple if they get more, the National Weather Service warned.
“Stay safe out there over the next several days as our region tries to thaw out,” the weather service said. “Chunks of falling ice will remain a hazard as well.”
Thousands have been without power since last weekend in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley because of storm damage. Despite work by repair crews, more than 41,000 customers were without electricity in the state early today, according to the website poweroutage.us.
A potential thaw isn’t expected until next week, when the forecast calls for above-average temperatures across most of the country, according to the National Weather Service.
Associated Press journalists Jonathan Mattise and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tennessee, Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, and Colleen Long in Washington contributed.
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