Storm Puts an Icy Clamp on the Midwest

Temperatures remained below freezing in the Northeast Thursday in the first big chill of winter, and a storm in the Midwest coated the Ohio Valley with snow and ice.

The storm that dumped up to 1 1/2 feet of snow on Kansas and almost a foot on Missouri and Nebraska headed into the Ohio Valley and Appalachia but lost some of its punch along the way, the National Weather Service said.

Ohio and Kentucky residents, who had been warned Wednesday to expect the worst, jammed stores to stock up on groceries.

“We were bombed” by customers, said Allen Mann, a clerk at an all-night supermarket in Columbus, Ohio.

The snow also prompted school closings in Maryland, West Virginia, western Kentucky and in the Cincinnati area, which received three inches of snow.

Behind the storm, digging out got under way in earnest in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Sections of Interstate 70 remained closed Thursday as authorities worked to clear the state’s main east-west highway.

In Nebraska, the storm contributed to ice jams on the Platte River that forced the evacuation of dozens of people from low-lying areas. The river began to recede slowly Thursday, said Dodge County sheriff’s dispatcher Denise Peterson.

“Quite a few people have moved out of there. I’d say there’d be close to 45 people,” she said.

In Missouri, scores of schools remained closed, but authorities said travel conditions had improved rapidly.

“Highway Department plows and traffic have broken up the snow on most roads,” said Don Dawdy, a Highway Patrol inspector at Jefferson City, Mo.

The weather service on Thursday afternoon warned of heavy snow over the southeast mountains of West Virginia, but only the storm’s fringes were expected to reach into the frigid Northeast, as it moves out to sea. Light snowfall dropped over Maryland on Thursday, and snow or freezing rain fell in parts of North Carolina.

Since Tuesday, at least seven weather-related deaths have been reported nationwide, including a homeless New Jersey man who apparently froze to death in a park.

The homeless continued to flock to shelters in the Northeast in numbers not seen since the Depression.

Jack Deacy, a spokesman for New York City’s Human Resources Administration, said 7,085 sought refuge in public shelters Wednesday night, the most since the Depression.

In Butler, N.J., the body of a 53-year-old homeless man who apparently froze to death was discovered Wednesday in a park, police said.

The storm and freeze have also been blamed for six deaths in traffic accidents: one in Colorado, one in Ohio and four in Kansas.