Brutal cold keeps grip on Northeast

BOSTON - Bitter cold kept its grip on the Northeast yesterday, while warmer weather brought relief to the Midwest and Southeast.

A day after schools in a dozen states closed and Alabama was colder than Alaska, temperatures in the South climbed into the 40s, thawing water fountains and pipes. Parts of the Northeast persisted with temperatures barely in the teens.

In Boston, the Pine Street Inn shelter sent vans to look for the homeless during the day, rather than just at night, shelter spokeswoman Barbara Trevisan said. The shelter also expanded its hours and is serving an extra meal.

"From what I'm hearing," she said, "it's the coldest it's been in a number of years."

Trevisan said the shelter, which holds about 700 people, had been packed in recent nights. Boston's low early yesterday was 8 degrees, and temperatures were near zero elsewhere in Massachusetts.

The weather led to at least seven deaths. In northeast Ohio, authorities said an 8-year-old boy drowned Friday after he fell into a partially frozen creek and got stuck under the ice. Temperatures had reached several degrees below zero in Mentor, Ohio.

Near Pittsburgh, the frozen body of a man was found outside his home at midday Friday. The cause of death was not immediately determined.

Temperatures of 30 below zero in Berlin, N.H., forced firefighters from at least four communities to battle a blaze in shifts yesterday morning. At least two buildings were destroyed, including the local office of U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes.

In northwestern Pennsylvania, the Coast Guard was sending an icebreaking tugboat yesterday evening to Presque Isle Bay to free two ships that had gotten stuck on their way to their winter berths. Thick ice kept the ships from making it into port in Erie.

The deep cold that seized Illinois for two days eased, leaving flooded rivers and frozen waterways in its wake.

Temperatures reached the low 30s in central Illinois and the low 20s in the northern part of the state yesterday - balmy compared with the subzero weather that forced people to hide their grimaces behind scarves and ski masks. It was the coldest episode in northern Illinois since February 1996, the National Weather Service said.

At least five tow barges became locked in ice on the lakes near Peoria, said Mike Cox, operations manager with the Army Corps of Engineers' Peoria office. Ice also caused barge traffic to slow along the Illinois River.

In Upstate New York, where some communities had plunged below minus 30 during the cold snap, midday temperatures yesterday reached only the midteens near the Canadian border. Plattsburgh, N.Y., broke the record low Friday at 24 below.