Arctic Cold Swoops Down on U.S. : Snow Falls Across Much of Nation; Scores of Schools Close

An arctic cold front dipped into the nation’s midsection today, unleashing a blast of frigid air that made it feel like 46 below in Iowa and spread snow from the Great Lakes to Texas.

The latest Canadian cold wave and snow closed scores of public schools and some colleges today in parts of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The storm has been blamed for the deaths of at least five people.

In Arizona today, helicopter crews for the second day distributed crucial supplies of food, fuel, medicine and livestock feed to hundreds of Indians stranded on isolated northern reservations.

Travelers’ advisories were posted today from eastern New Mexico across northern Texas and Oklahoma and from southeastern Missouri to Pennsylvania. The storm dumped up to five inches of snow by early today in Lebanon and Rolla, Mo., the weather service said.

The Deep South may be in for a surprise as winter-storm watches have been posted for tonight and Friday from eastern Texas to northern Alabama and western Tennessee.

Early today it was 33 below at Laramie, Wyo., while in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a 7 below reading and winds of 18 m.p.h. combined for a wind chill factor of 46 below.

The weather service issued a special statement for Texas warning of a “strong and potentially dangerous arctic front” that raked San Antonio late Wednesday and prompted stockmen’s advisories in the eastern part of the state. Ranchers in New Mexico also were advised to keep their animals indoors, along with any pets.

“There’s a huge trough of low pressure through the center of the country, and lots of cold air is being drawn down from Canada,” Scott Tansey of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, Mo., said today. “It looks like that will continue at least through Saturday.”

Today’s snowfall was heaviest in the Great Lakes area, with Cincinnati receiving three inches by early morning. “It’s not really heavy snow. The problem is more the blowing and drifting because of the winds,” Tansey said.

More than two inches of snow fell overnight in Wichita Falls, Tex., with drifts up to a foot reported. As much as six inches was forecast for parts of the panhandle, including Amarillo, where drifts today piled up 18 inches high.

In Maryland, where schools were closed in 15 counties today, up to six inches of snow was forecast.

During a snowstorm in Edgewood, Ky., overnight, a twin-engine, private plane crashed in a subdivision while trying to make an emergency landing. Three people aboard the plane were killed and two on the ground were injured, authorities said.

Cold wave’s onset, Page 9.