More Midwest Cold Records Fall as Sleet, Ice Plague Deep South

A Canadian delivery of sleet and ice sledded into the Deep South on Monday in a winter preview that cracked century-old temperature records across the Midwest and clogged the Missouri River with a 75-mile ice jam.

The bitter weather closed schools from Mississippi to Michigan, and forecasters said that no change was in sight. The cold is being caused by a horseshoe-shaped flow of air that follows the West Coast up to Alaska, chills and plunges down through Canada into the East and Midwest.

Southerners from central Mississippi to the Carolinas awoke Monday to a vista of freezing rain and sleet that made driving hazardous and was blamed for at least one traffic death. Hundreds of schools were closed.

The National Weather Service said as much as an inch of sleet and freezing rain covered north and central Georgia before dawn, and freezing rain extended as far south as Savannah.

At least 19 deaths around the nation were blamed on the cold during the weekend, including the deaths of two young Tulsa, Okla., girls who apparently were playing with a makeshift sled Sunday when they plunged through thin ice on a lake. Two homeless people died of hypothermia while sleeping in New York City subway stations.

Monday’s cold broke Dec. 18 records that had held for more than a century in Columbus, Ohio, where it was minus 7; in Pittsburgh, Pa., where it also was minus 7, and in Detroit, where it was minus 3.

Other records included Parkersburg, W. Va., at 4 above, Cincinnati at 3 below, Ft. Wayne, Ind., and Cleveland at minus 5, and Youngstown, Ohio, at minus 8.

The Missouri River turned to ice for about a 75-mile stretch between Blair, Neb., north of Omaha, and Sioux City, Iowa, according to the National Weather Service. Officials feared that the ice floe could cause problems for communities that pump their water from the river.

In St. Joseph, Mo., officials activated a new emergency pump as a precautionary measure to keep water flowing to the city.