Deep Freeze Follows the Season’s First Big Snowstorm in Northeast

Nearly two feet of snow that fell across the Northeast in the region’s first major winter storm froze solid Sunday as arctic winds kicked up and temperatures plummeted.

The snow that dumped half a foot to 21 inches from Kentucky to Maine on Saturday tapered off in most of the region, but it was followed by numbing cold and winds gusting up to 50 m.p.h.

In northern New York, the wind chill factor fell to 44 degrees below zero in Massena and 40 below in Plattsburgh. In Maine, winds of up to 30 m.p.h. made it feel like minus 19 degrees in Portland and minus 17 in Presque Isle.

“For most people, it was just a good, old-fashioned winter storm,” Jim Mansfield of the National Weather Service in Gray, Me., said Sunday.

At least six traffic deaths--two each in Kentucky and New Jersey and one each in Massachusetts and New Hampshire--were blamed on the weather Saturday. Power was temporarily knocked out to thousands across the region.

The snow and wind also caused a 19th-Century aviary at the Bronx Zoo in New York to collapse, allowing at least 33 rare gulls and terns to fly away. Many other birds became tangled in wire and were saved; none were killed.

Zoo officials said the escaped birds probably would not survive.

Major East Coast airports were reopened and most roads were clear Sunday, although whiteouts caused by blowing snow were reported along some sections of the New York State Thruway near Syracuse.

Winds buffeted West Virginia on Sunday, bringing the mercury down to minus 22 in Wheeling, minus 21 in Morgantown and minus 20 in Martinsburg.

Although major roads were cleared by Sunday, people who didn’t shovel during the storm were likely to be stuck with the icy snow for the rest of the week, with high temperatures around zero expected today.

“It will be the coldest so far” this winter, said meteorologist George Klein.