Eastern Shelters Bulge in Bitter Cold : Weather: Icy temperatures well into the negative range snarl traffic and snuff holiday party plans. But Billings, Mont., records a balmy 54.

A post-Christmas rush of cold air swamped homeless shelters in the East on Sunday and made travel an ordeal around parts of the Great Lakes.

Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., chilled to 31 degrees below zero, a record for the month, the National Weather Service said.

“We were way overdue for this,” Sault Ste. Marie police dispatcher Bill Payment said. “It’s still about 20 below (at 1 p.m.), and people are out running around without hats on. We’re used to this.”

“You learn to live with it--but you don’t have to like it,” said Linda Brown of the northwest Iowa community of Estherville, which had a midday wind chill of 30 below zero.

Sunday’s low for the Lower 48 states was 50 below zero at the tiny Iron Range town of Tower in northeastern Minnesota, the weather service said. The Lake Superior shore town of Grand Marais, Minn., had a wind chill that felt like 68 below zero.

The cold extended as far south as northern Florida, where the temperature in Crestview fell to 22 degrees, the weather service said. Miami cooled to 48.

By Sunday evening, about 23 inches had collected in Erie in northwestern Pennsylvania. Cold in Aliquippa caused a water main break that left the city’s 15,000 residents without water for most of the day, a police dispatcher said.

At Akron, Ohio’s cold spot at midday with a reading of only 9 degrees, the Haven of Rest Ministries men’s shelter was filled to capacity with 52 homeless people and 18 residents, supervisor Gary Meeks said. Forty people were referred to a second shelter.

In Columbus, Ohio, the Open Shelter, which holds about 120 men, was “a little more crowded than usual last night,” said Curtis Turner, a supervisor. “We had 114, and that’s eight to 10 more than a typical night.”

A supervisor for the agency that tracks New York City renters’ complaints about heating problems said it logged 988 calls between midnight and noon.

“For a weekend, that’s heavy, due to the weather,” said the supervisor. The city’s temperature started around 20 degrees in the morning and dropped from there.

People with heating problems in Philadelphia contacted the Philadelphia Gas Works, which quickly filled its schedule with repair appointments, spokeswoman Jacki Mungai said. Philadelphia Electric Co. said it would restore power to customers whose service had been cut because of overdue bills.

Buffalo, N.Y., had its whitest Christmas on record, with 18 inches of snow since Friday night, the weather service said.

Many Buffalo holiday party-goers were shut in by bad roads and poor visibility in blowing snow.

“I was set to go to a party in Niagara Falls,” Leroy Hunter said as his children built a snowman. “But it was so terrible out that we just decided to stay home. At least my kids are enjoying the snow.”

Areas north of Syracuse, N.Y., near Lake Ontario, had picked up about a foot of snow by midafternoon, and six more inches were predicted. Part of Interstate 81 north of Syracuse was closed for several hours when blowing snow cut visibility to near zero.

A section of Interstate 271, the beltway around Cleveland, was closed part of the day by drifts and ice, police said. Up to 15 inches of snow fell in 24 hours in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland.

But in Montana, which often has some of the coldest weather in the nation, Sunday was unusually mild. Billings warmed to a record 54 Saturday. Highs in the 50s were recorded in southwestern South Dakota and western Nebraska.

It was too good to last. Predicted highs today were 0 to 15 degrees east of the Continental Divide, and 25 to 35 west.