Cold Maintains Grip on North; Ice Glazes South

A second day of record cold and single-digit temperatures gripped the Northeast Monday, while an icy storm rolled north from Dixie, glazing highways from the Tennessee Valley to the Appalachians. The bad weather was blamed for at least 12 deaths.

The southern storm caused some North Carolina legislators to miss Monday night’s State of the State speech.

Boston reported a morning low of 4 degrees. Buffalo, N. Y., had 3 degrees, and the low was 8 degrees in Pittsburgh and New York City, chasing thousands of homeless people into shelters for a second consecutive night.

The temperature reached 18 degrees below zero Monday in Watertown, N. Y., coldest in the nation for a second day after Sunday’s reading of 30 below.

Cold Breaks Records

A minus 7 reading in Binghamton, N. Y., eclipsed the 1979 record for the date by two degrees, and 4-degree lows in Bridgeport and Stratford, Conn., broke 1963 records by two degrees.

The storm in the Deep South, blamed for a string of Gulf Coast thunderstorms and tornadoes, one of which killed a Louisiana woman Sunday, spread rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow from the lower Mississippi Valley to central Virginia.

By Monday evening, up to six inches of snow had fallen in the mountains of North Carolina and southern Virginia.

In Raleigh, legislative leaders said the bad weather kept about 25% of the 170 legislators from North Carolina Gov. James G. Martin’s State of the State speech. Normally, every legislator attends the presentation.

“You can’t even walk, much less drive,” Sgt. T. T. Jeffries of the North Carolina Highway Patrol said. Police reported more than 1,200 accidents in 12 hours on roads glazed with inch-thick ice across the state.

3-Vehicle Accident

A tractor-trailer rig slammed into a car and a Greyhound bus carrying about 30 people in Greensboro, N. C., but no one was seriously injured, police said.

Near Winston-Salem, N. C., a tanker truck loaded with 8,800 gallons of gasoline overturned on icy U.S. 421 and exploded in the median, authorities said. The driver jumped to safety seconds before the explosion.

In Charleston, W. Va., nearly an inch of freezing rain closed all bridges and blocked the three interstates feeding the city during morning rush hour.