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Chill Eases Its Icy Grip but Effects Are Still Felt

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From Staff and wire reports

Although sunshine bathed California on Christmas, chilly temperatures gripping the state for a sixth day left thousands of homeowners coping with frozen water pipes and farmers tabulating freeze damage to crops.

“It was a record-breaking cold system,” Jerry Steiger of the National Weather Service said Tuesday in Los Angeles. “Most of the cold air now is moving eastward. . . . It looks like we’re going to warm up.” Temperatures plummeted to record lows in some cities again on Tuesday. Sacramento Airport’s 22-degree reading broke the record 27-degree low reached on Christmas Day 1982, and the 22 degrees in Bakersfield was the coldest Dec. 25 since a 24-degree reading in 1937.

Other record lows included 35 degrees in San Francisco, 29 at Moffett Field and 34 at the Alameda Naval Air Station.

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The high temperature at the Los Angeles Civic Center Tuesday was “a balmy 68,” said Steve Burback, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

He predicted a high of 70 degrees for today, with light winds, and a low tonight of about 40 degrees. Thursday should be a few degrees warmer, he said.

The cold snap cracked thousands of water pipes, leaving about 12,000 people in the Santa Cruz Mountains without water.

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“It’s a real pain,” said Sophie Russell, 61, of Ben Lomond, who has been out of water since temperatures plummeted to 10 degrees Saturday night. She was among the 75% of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District’s customers expected to be without water until today.

A warming trend was predicted for the rest of the week, but agricultural officials said it was too late for crops damaged by the frigid air mass dubbed the “Arctic Express.”

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