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DIXFIELD, Me.

With the darkening approach of another ice-hard Saturday night in western Maine, the man on the telephone was pleading for help, again. His tank was nearly dry, and he and his disabled wife needed precious heating oil to keep warm. Could Ike help out? Again?

Ike Libby, the co-owner of a small oil company called Hometown Energy, ached for his customer, Robert Hartford. He knew what winter in Maine meant, especially for a retired couple living in a wood-frame house built in the 19th century. But he also knew that the Hartfords already owed him more than $700 for two earlier deliveries.

The oil man said he was very sorry. The customer said he understood. And each was left to grapple with a matter so mundane in Maine, and so vital: the need for heat. For the rest of the weekend, Mr. Libby agonized over his decision, while Mr. Hartford warmed his house with the heat from his electric stove’s four burners.

“You get off the phone thinking, ‘Are these people going to be found frozen?’ ” Mr. Libby said. No wonder, he said, that he is prescribed medication for stress and “happy pills” for equilibrium.

Two days later, Mr. Libby told his two office workers about his decision. Diane Carlton works the front desk while her daughter-in-law, Janis, handles accounts. But they share the job of worrying about Ike, whose heart, they say, is too big for his bantam size and, maybe, this business.

The Hartford case “ate him,” Janice Carlton recalled. “It just ate him.”

Mr. Libby drove off to make deliveries in his oil truck, a rolling receptacle of crumpled coffee cups and cigarette packs. Diane Carlton, the office’s mother hen, went home early. This meant that Janis Carlton was alone when their customer, Mr. Hartford, stepped in from the cold. He had something in his hand: the title to his 16-year-old Lincoln Town Car.

Would Hometown Energy take the title as collateral for some heating oil? Please?

Maine is in the midst of its Republican presidential caucus, the state’s wintry moment in the battle for the country’s future. But at this time of year, almost nothing matters here as much as basic heat.

While federal officials try to wean the country from messy and expensive heating oil, Maine remains addicted. The housing stock is old, most communities are rural, and many residents cannot afford to switch to a cleaner heat source. So the tankers pull into, say, the Portland port, the trucks load up, and the likes of Ike Libby sidle up to house after house to fill oil tanks.

This winter has been especially austere. As part of the drive to cut spending, the Obama administration and Congress have trimmed the energy-assistance program that helps the poor — 65,000 households in Maine alone — to pay their heating bills. Eligibility is harder now, and the average amount given here is $483, down from $804 last year, all at a time when the price of oil has risen more than 40 cents in a year, to $3.71 a gallon.

As a result, Community Concepts, a community-action program serving western Maine, receives dozens of calls a day from people seeking warmth. But Dana Stevens, its director of energy and housing, says that he has distributed so much of the money reserved for emergencies that he fears running out. This means that sometimes the agency’s hot line purposely goes unanswered.

So Mainers try to make do. They warm up in idling cars, then dash inside and dive under the covers. They pour a few gallons of kerosene into their oil tank and hope it lasts. And they count on others. Maybe their pastor. Maybe the delivery man. Maybe, even, a total stranger.

Hometown Energy has five trucks and seven employees, and is run out of an old house next to the Ellis variety store and diner. Oil perfumes the place, thanks to the petroleum-stained truckers and mechanics clomping through. Janis Carlton, 35, tracks accounts in the back, while Diane Carlton, 64, works in the front, where, every now and then, she finds herself comforting walk-ins who fear the cold so much that they cry.

Their boss, Mr. Libby, 53, has rough hands and oil-stained dungarees. He has been delivering oil for most of his adult life — throwing the heavy hose over his shoulder, shoving the silver nozzle into the tank and listening for the whistle that blows when oil replaces air.

Eight years ago, he and another Dixfield local, Gene Ellis, who owns that variety store next door, created Hometown Energy, a company whose logo features a painting of a church-and-hillside scene from just down the road. They thought that with Ike’s oil sense and Gene’s business sense, they’d make money. But Mr. Libby says now that he’d sell the company in a heartbeat.

“You know what my dream is?” Mr. Libby asked. “To be a greeter at Walmart.”

This is because he sells heat — not lumber, or paper, or pastries — and around here, more than a few come too close to not having enough. Sure, some abuse the heating-assistance program, he says, but many others live in dire need, including people he has known all his life.

So Mr. Libby does what he can. Unlike many oil companies, he makes small deliveries and waves off most service fees. He sets up elaborate payment plans, hoping that obligations don’t melt away with the spring thaw. He accepts postdated checks. And he takes his medication.

When the customer named Robert Hartford called on the after-hours line that Saturday afternoon, asking for another delivery, Mr. Libby struggled to do what was right. He cannot bear the thought of people wanting for warmth, but his tendency to cut people a break is one reason Hometown Energy isn’t making much money, as his understanding partner keeps gently pointing out.

“I do have a heart,” Mr. Libby said. But he was already “on the hook” for the two earlier deliveries he had made to the couple’s home. What’s more, he didn’t know even know the Hartfords.

Robert and Wilma Hartford settled into the porous old house, just outside of Dixfield, a few months ago, in what was the latest of many moves in their 37-year marriage. Mr. Hartford was once a stonemason who traveled from the Pacific Northwest to New England, plying his trade.

Those wandering days are gone. Mr. Hartford, 68, has a bad shoulder, Mrs. Hartford, 71, needs a wheelchair, and the two survive on $1,200 a month (“Poverty,” Mrs. Hartford says). So far this year they have received $360 in heating assistance, he said, about a quarter of last year’s allocation.

Mr. Hartford said he used what extra money they had to repair broken pipes, install a cellar door, and seal various cracks with Styrofoam spray that he bought at Walmart. That wasn’t enough to block the cold, of course, and the two oil deliveries carried them only into early January.

There was no oil to burn, so the cold took up residence, beside the dog and the four cats, under the velvet painting of Jesus. The couple had no choice but to run up their electric bill. They turned on the Whirlpool stove’s burners and circulated the heat with a small fan. They ran the dryer’s hose back into the basement to keep pipes from freezing, even when there were no clothes to dry.

And, just about every day, Mr. Hartford drove to a gas station and filled up a five-gallon plastic container with $20 of kerosene. “It was the only way we had,” he said. Finally, seeing no other option, Mr. Hartford made the hard telephone call to Hometown Energy. Panic lurked behind his every word, and every word wounded the oil man on the other end.

“I had a hard time saying no,” Mr. Libby said. “But I had to say no.”

When Mr. Hartford heard that no, he also heard regret. “You could tell in his voice,” he said.

Two days later, Mr. Hartford drove up to Hometown Energy’s small office in his weathered gray Lincoln, walked inside, and made his desperate offer: The title to his car for some oil.

His offer stunned Janis Carlton, the only employee present. But she remembered that someone had offered, quietly, to donate 50 gallons of heating oil if an emergency case walked through the door. She called that person and explained the situation.

Her mother-in-law and office mate, Diane Carlton, answered without hesitation. Deliver the oil and I’ll pay for it, she said, which is one of the ways that Mainers make do in winter.

In Fuel Oil Country, Cold That Cuts to the Heart,
NYT,
3.2.2012,
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/
us/maine-resident-struggles-to-heat-his-home.html

Storm Leaves Much of Country

Shivering, Shoveling

and Awaiting More

February 2, 2011

The New York Times

By MICHAEL COOPER

The blizzard that dropped a foot or more of snow across a staggeringly wide area of the country, from Oklahoma up through a paralyzed Chicago and across parts of an ice-glazed New England, finally began to weaken Wednesday. It left behind a long trail of spun-out cars, darkened homes, closed schools and stranded fliers.

But the harsh winter weather was not over, forecasters warned: a bitter cold front threatened to follow the storm, bringing subzero temperatures to many areas trying to dig out.

So even as Chicago was trying to recover from the third-biggest snowfall in its history — a monster of a storm that smothered the city in 20.2 inches of snow, stranded hundreds of drivers on Lake Shore Drive for hours, closed the city’s schools for the first time in a dozen years and whipped up gusts that reached 70 miles an hour at one point — the National Weather Service was still issuing warnings. The temperature there was expected to fall to 5 below zero overnight, and to 20 below in outlying areas, with the wind chill making it feel colder.

“It’s going to be a while before the snow and ice melts in a lot of areas,” said Christopher Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, noting that cold air was expected to pour down from northern Wisconsin all the way to Houston, which is forecast to have a hard freeze. “This was a large, giant, powerful storm.”

It was a terrible day for travel, whether by train, plane or automobile. More than 6,000 flights, about a fifth of the country’s air traffic, were canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks air travel. Amtrak shut down service between New York and Philadelphia during the morning rush hour, and canceled many trains in and out of Chicago. Not only were side roads closed by snow and ice, but Interstate highways also were shut down.

Two-thirds of the country seemed to be reeling from one form of extreme weather or another. There were tornado warnings along the Gulf Coast. Snow and ice forced Texas to institute rolling power blackouts. The heavy snow in Oklahoma left The Tulsa World unable to print the newspaper for the first time in its 106-year history. Both Milwaukee and Chicago groaned under heavy snow.

In New York, falling ice shut both the Verrazano-Narrows and George Washington Bridges for part of the morning. And the snow, ice and freezing rain continued to move east across New England, and might have contributed to the collapse of an office building in Middletown, Conn., that sprayed bricks across Main Street.

With 30 states feeling the storm’s impact, the National Weather Service had to upgrade its Web site to handle traffic that reached up to 20 million hits an hour, officials said. Snow fell from New Mexico and Texas up to Minnesota, and east to Maine. Several places were hit with more than two feet of snow, and by Wednesday evening more than a foot of snow had been recorded in parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and several other states were close behind.

In Washington, President Obama was briefed by officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The dangers of the storm were not over, and officials said it might have contributed to deaths from causes like car accidents and heart attacks in several states.

“The deep snow accumulation will make shoveling very difficult,” warned the National Weather Service, “and potentially deadly.”

Of course, all was not Snowmageddon. The white snow softened the hard edges of cities and towns around the nation, turning them into glittering Currier & Ives-like vistas, with stalactite icicles dripping from the eaves of houses. School closings made snowball fights easier, and the children of Chicago, many of whom had never had a snow day in their lives, found themselves sprung from classes not only on Wednesday but on Thursday as well.

But there were also plenty of headaches, and not only from the tear-inducing cold air that began to trickle down from the north. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were left without power, especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Commutes were slippery messes, where they were possible at all. In many places the temperatures dipped just in time to turn slushy streets into dangerously icy streets. Shoveling felt like a Sisyphean task, as new snow and ice kept coating the cleared sidewalks.

In Boston, which has already received more than five feet of snow this winter, the back-to-back snowstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday had some people feeling like they were living in a continuous loop. That it was Feb. 2 — Groundhog Day — was not lost on Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. “It’s Groundhog Day, and literally like ‘Groundhog Day’ the movie,” he said, in a nod to the film in which a day keeps repeating itself.

Reporting was contributed

by Monica Davey from Chicago,

Malcolm Gay from St. Louis,

A. G. Sulzberger from Kansas City, Mo.,

and Katie Zezima from Boston.

Storm Leaves Much of Country Shivering, Shoveling and Awaiting More,
NYT,
2.2.2011,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/
us/03storm.html

This Winter,

New York City Is the New Buffalo

January 27, 2011
The New York Times
By JAMES BARRON

There was the recently familiar annoyance — at the buses that did not come, at the thigh-high stoops that had to be shoveled.

There was the unmistakable beauty — the snow-laden trees, the backdrops that Norman Rockwell could not have improved upon.

And there was the nagging question: Is New York City the new Buffalo, where snow — snow on the ground, snow on the roof, snow on the windowsill, snow in the forecast, snow measured with a yardstick, not a mere ruler — is just a fact of everyday life? All snow, all the time.

“I’m so used to it at this point,” said Diana Biederman, a publicist in Manhattan. “What days don’t we have snow?”

And so a fresh sense of snow fatigue settled over a city that has been hit hard in the last few weeks. Nineteen inches of heavy, wet snow fell on Central Park. That was only an inch less than the 20 inches that paralyzed the city a month ago, according to the National Weather Service. Parts of Connecticut and New Jersey got nearly as much, and snowfalls totaled at least a foot from Philadelphia to Boston.

In New York, where the slow response to the Dec. 26 blizzard became a black eye for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other officials, the battle was joined early. The mayor said on Thursday that 1,700 plows had worked overnight and that the city had hired 1,500 people to shovel crosswalks and bus stops.

But the city canceled school — Thursday was the ninth school day lost because of snow since 1978 and the fifth under Mr. Bloomberg — and transit officials suspended bus service until the storm had blown through, something they did not do as the December storm was bearing down and hundreds of buses got stuck in the snow, blocking plows and other traffic.

This time around, the mayor said at a news briefing, several dozen ambulances got stuck in the snow, but relief ambulances arrived quickly to carry patients to hospitals. And while the 911 system was flooded with calls and dispatches were slowed, “no calls ever remained in a queue,” the mayor said.

Transit officials also curtailed subway service when the storm was at its fiercest. Jay H. Walder, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said a few trains were stuck in the snow “for short periods of time,” but in contrast to the post-Christmas storm, few passengers were trapped onboard overnight. A transit spokesman said some remained on a train at the end of the line at Coney Island — they had nowhere else to go, and the heat was on in the train.

Mr. Walder said that the Metro-North Railroad through Westchester County and Connecticut “lost all service” for a while early Thursday. He said the Long Island Rail Road coped with delays during the morning rush as crews cleared station platforms and stairs.

At the airports, delays and cancellations were the order of the morning, though there, too, things were clearing up by the middle of the day.

There were signs that the snow was changing people’s routines. People sent e-mails and text messages about how a snow shovel was their new BFF — even apartment dwellers like Annie Tan, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, bought one. Or they did what Alan Flax, a real estate broker from Forest Hills, Queens, did. He hired someone to help dig out his car, which was in Manhattan, on East Houston Street near Essex Street.

“It seems like an awful lot of snow in a short window,” he said. “Every week or every 10 days, it’s not just a little snow, it’s a lot of snow. It’s got me scratching my head — when did New York City become so snowbound?”

This is now the snowiest January since the National Weather Service started keeping track in 1869, and could end up being the snowiest month ever. So far the January total stands at 36 inches, 8.6 more than in 1925, the previous record-holder.

Tim Morrin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s New York-area office on Long Island, also noted that this was already the sixth-snowiest winter on record, with a total of 56.5 inches. The snowiest was 1995-96, with 75.6 inches.

“And we have all of February and all of March to look forward to,” Mr. Morrin said. “We remain in a pretty cold pattern that would be conducive to more snow.”

Even in January. The Weather Service is calling for more snow, but only a little, by Saturday.

Which will bring New York closer to Buffalo’s total for the winter so far, 61.6 inches.

Steve McLaughlin, a weather service meteorologist there, said measurable snow had been recorded in Buffalo on 39 days.

“We keep getting our inch a day, an inch a day,” he said. “All we do up here is nickel-and-dime it, but we’ll beat you anyway. We have to keep up the reputation.”

Colin Moynihan and Andy Newman

contributed reporting.

This article has been revised

to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 27, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated

that the Port Authority had closed

La Guardia airport early on Thursday morning.

It was Teterboro Airport that was closed,

not La Guardia.

This Winter, New York City Is the New Buffalo,
NYT,
27.1.2011,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/
nyregion/28snow.html

Clearing Roads in Winter

Requires Snowphistication

February 16, 2010
Filed at 6:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- The forecast: a mighty winter blizzard sure to dump a record-setting blanket of snow that will grow from inches to feet overnight, just in time for rush hour.

When it happened this month in Washington, they called it ''Snowpocalypse'' and an overwhelmed city couldn't keep its streets clear. When it happened last week in Chicago, they called it ''Tuesday'' and kept the blacktop black from first flakes to final drifts.

''I'd take my plow drivers and put them up against anyone in North America,'' said Bobby Richardson, Chicago's snow removal boss. ''Ten inches, a foot of snow? That's nothing for us. Nothing.''

That's not the case outside of Chicago and other cities in the American snow belt, where the strategy for cleaning the streets of winter's wrath is often based on a calculated risk that snow won't fall where snow usually doesn't. Most years, that gamble pays off. But this winter, historic blizzards have struck cities where traffic-snarling snowfalls are rare or even unheard of, exposing the dangers of counting on the Big One not to hit.

''You won't see bare pavement for at least three weeks -- and that's if we don't get another snow next week,'' Steve Shannon, an operations manager at the Virginia Department of Transportation, said late last week about suburban Washington's Fairfax County.

To be fair, the one-two punch of storms that socked the East Coast this month were record-setting, with snow falling so fast and deep Washington pulled its plows from the road. A quarter were knocked out of commission entirely by the struggle of trying to move so much snow off the streets.

And yet Richardson and his legendary snow-clearing legions argue that keeping a city moving during such a blizzard isn't an insurmountable task. Should as much snow fall on Chicago as it did in Washington this month, more than 500 plows and 1,000 workers -- hardened by years of work in tough Midwestern winters -- are prepared to wipe it all away.

''Chicago would get through such a storm, and while it would not be total normalcy, the city would still function,'' said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Buried by snow this month, cities across the Mid-Atlantic states were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states. No place seemed more unprepared for the weather than the Washington area: The federal government shut down for days as District residents complained of a spotty, haphazard response that left some streets all but abandoned.

And in the South, where even a light dusting is enough to paralyze commuters until the weather warms up and melts away the problem, most major cities have only a handful of plows -- if any at all. In Dallas, a city of 1.2 million people but not a single dedicated snow plow, authorities count on snowflakes melting the minute they touch the ground.

That didn't happen last week, when the worst storm in nearly five decades dropped more than a foot of snow in northern Texas. All the city could do was send reconnaissance teams to identify slick spots and direct trucks to spread sand.

''Historically, that has handled every situation we face,'' city spokesman Frank Librio said.

So, which city is best at cleaning up after the Big One? Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., or some other snowy locale? Those who study the business of providing such services say looking at comparable data is the only way to credibly assess whether one snow removal strategy beats another. But not only does such information not exist, the hundreds of variables involved complicate any effort to devise a master strategy.

For example, St. Paul, Minn., is far hillier than its Twin Cities counterpart of Minneapolis, which is filled with more alleys and more cars -- obstacles plows must dodge. Each snowfall is different, too: light, powdery snow falls when the temperatures drop close to zero, and wet, heavy snow comes when the temperature hovers around freezing.

''The snow and ice community has struggled with this topic for years as the methods, equipment, availability of resources and most importantly, level of service and winter severity, vary enormously from state to state, region to region,'' said Caleb Dobbins, a state maintenance engineer at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

What can be measured is preparation. With an annual average snowfall of 38 inches, Chicago maintains a fleet of 300 trucks specifically designed for removing snow, 200 others that can be fitted with plow blades and budgeted $17 million for the work this winter. Washington, with an average of 19.4 inches of snow each year, has 200 trucks that can be fitted with blades and a snow budget of $6 million.

Some Washington residents say the district is in a no-win situation: slammed for not being prepared when the Big One hits, but likely to face criticism if it spent much more on snow removal.

''I don't know how prudent it would be to throw millions of taxpayer dollars at a problem that may not rear its head in a century,'' said Mike DeBonis, a columnist for the Washington City Paper.

If the already cash-strapped city wanted to spend more on snow, he added, it would be forced to cut other, arguably higher priority services, such as garbage collection or tree trimming.

Head farther South and the preparation naturally gets even thinner. In Pensacola, Fla., there is no budget for snow removal. The city has a fertilizer spreader that can work with sand, but no snow-clearing master plan that in snowbelt cities typically includes target times for clearing streets.

''If we knew a cold front was coming in, I'd have to go to a pool company and buy some sodium chloride,'' said Pensacola public works director Al Garza. ''Every time we take precautions, (we) stockpile some masonry sands in different locations and end up not using it.''

Then comes a month like February, when snow covers some ground in 49 states; two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow cover Friday. While Garza was safe, snow fell just 40 miles north of Pensacola last week. After brief respite over the weekend, it was snowing again in Washington on Monday.

The consequences of failing to clear that snow can be deadly. Each year, more than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,000 injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. A storm that shuts down roads also closes the door of business, costing communities hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales taxes and revenue from income taxes.

''The benefits of being better prepared far outweigh the costs -- because it costs so much when the Big One does hit,'' said Greg Cohen, executive director of the Roadway Safety Foundation, whose own street in Washington was still unplowed several days after the storms hit.

Then there's the politics of snow: Mayors know failure to remove it can cost them their jobs.

Every mayor knows the story of Chicago's Michael Bilandic, the incumbent who lost in the 1979 Democratic primary after the city failed to clear streets fast enough after a storm. These days, voters embrace Mayor Richard M. Daley in part because the crews at Streets and Sanitation keeps the city in business every winter: The city's public schools haven't had a ''snow day'' in more than a decade.

''I got more calls from mayors during snow storms than at any other time,'' said Tom Eggum, a retired public works director in St. Paul. ''It's probably because of what happened in Chicago.''

While nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area that gets some snow each year, there's a consensus Chicago gets rid of it as well as any place else. The city received an A grade for clearing its main streets from the Illinois Policy Institute following last week's storm, which broke the single-day snowfall record for February by dropping more than a foot of snow on the city.

A cool confidence flows through Richardson's downtown snow command center, where the city's deputy streets commissioner sleeps on a cot so he can work around the clock during a storm. He oversees a dozen dispatchers who comb through satellite data, watch giant screens showing up to 1,000 live camera shots of major streets, and call plow drivers to let them know they've missed a spot or need to drop their blade a little lower.

The drivers at the other end of a dispatcher's call are often under the most pressure, intently focused for 12 or more hours at a time on the road ahead, anxious about clipping curbs, cars or even pedestrians as they clear Chicago's 9,500 miles of street lanes. They're helped by a merciless towing operation that clears illegally parked cars to make room for the plows.

Cohen, the Roadway Safety Foundation chief, said Washington and other cities ill-prepared for snow should heed the lessons of this February winter and start preparing for the next Big One by building up that kind of snow-fighting force. But he doesn't have faith it will happen: As voters, people might remember street-clearing failures, but as taxpayers, they tend to forget as soon as the snow melts.

''People say it should be done,'' he said. ''But then no one connects the dots that someone has to pay for it.''

------

Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko

and Sarah Karush in Washington,

Jeff Karoub in Detroit, Briana Bierschbach

in St. Paul, Minn.,

Linda Steward Ball in Dallas,

Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y.,

and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis.,

contributed to this report.

Clearing Roads in Winter Requires Snowphistication,
NYT, 16.2.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/16/us/
AP-US-Winter-Weather-Clearing-the-Streets.html

Big Chill:

Blast of Arctic Air

Stuns Eastern US

January 17, 2009
Filed at 4:43 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama briefly turned colder than Alaska, water fountains froze into ice sculptures in South Carolina and Florida shivered through its brush with the Arctic air blast that deadened car batteries in the Northeast and prompted scattered Midwest power outages.

As Southerners awaited an expected weekend thaw, the Northeast persisted under the bitterly cold air from Canada that sent temperatures plunging in some places below minus 30 degrees Friday and left even longtime residents reluctant to venture outdoors.

Quentin Masters braved the Big Chill, making a trip to a Syracuse, N.Y., post office to mail his sister a gift for her birthday Monday.

''It was almost too cold to come down,'' he said, but he added, ''I don't want to be late.''

Single-digit temperatures and subzero wind chills were expected in western New York through the weekend, with more seasonable conditions moving in early next week.

To Southerners, who rarely see temperatures so cold, the icebox-like weather was the most jarring. Construction worker Allen Johnson wore a gray beanie, flannel shirt, long johns and boots as he stopped for coffee in Montgomery, Ala., after an overnight low of 22 degrees Friday.

''No matter how bad it is, it could be worse -- we could be in Anchorage, Alaska,'' Johnson said. Actually, the temperature was about 20 degrees warmer in Anchorage for a while Friday.

Freezing temperatures threatened to kill picturesque Spanish moss hanging from Gulf Coast trees. In Spartanburg, S.C., a hard freeze coated a water fountain in shimmering icicles. And it was too cold to bet on dogs in West Virginia, ditto for Tennessee.

Heather Davis, of NashvillePAW Magazine, was watching as her photographer unsuccessfully tried to coax their cover model, a white poodle named Cotton, to pose outdoors for the animal publication in that city in Tennessee. Cotton, who is up for adoption, ran to the car and didn't want to leave.

''I don't think I realized how cold it was,'' Davis said, laughing.

But gusting winds were no laughing matter in Ohio, where temperatures pushed to their lowest this winter and forced scattered power outages. Lows ranged from minus 6 degrees in Cincinnati to minus 14 degrees in Dayton and Toledo -- just missing record lows for Friday's date.

Thousands in Ohio and Illinois lost power for several hours while Charleston, W.Va.-based Appalachian Power, which delivers electricity to more than 1 million customers Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, had record electricity demand as businesses and homes cranked up the heat.

In Columbus, Ohio, 45-year-old Brandon Champney beat the cold by visiting the orchid exhibit at the Franklin Park Conservatory -- a deliciously climate-controlled 72 degrees.

''It's beautiful, warm, great,'' Champney said.

The cold claimed at least six lives since Friday and contributed to dozens of traffic accidents. One death involved a man in a wheelchair who was found in subzero temperatures stuck in the snow, a shovel in his hand, outside his home in Des Moines, Iowa.

In central Pennsylvania, AAA fielded a spike in calls from motorists whose batteries went dead or door locks froze shut. Wind chills were as low as 25 degrees below zero in greater Pittsburgh.

In Michigan, a winter storm watch was in effect for parts of the Lower Peninsula, where up to 8 inches of snow could fall by Sunday morning, the weather service said.

And in Illinois, where a low of 32 degrees below zero was recorded in a north-central area Friday, the weather service predicted only modest weekend relief -- sort of. The mercury was expected to head Saturday into the 20s in northern Illinois and the 30s in southern Illinois.

''The heat wave begins,'' meteorologist Tim Halbach quipped.

------

Associated Press writers William Kates in Syracuse,

Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tenn.,

and David Mercer in Champaign, Ill.,

contributed to this report.

Big Chill: Blast of Arctic Air Stuns Eastern US,
NYT, 17.1.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/17/us/AP-Winter-Weather.html

Coldest night for 20 years

in parts of southern England

• Benson in Oxfordshire
records lowest figure at -11.8C

• Primary school shut
after thieves steal heating oil

Wednesday 7 January 2009
Guardian.co.uk
14.14 GMT
Steven Morris and Sam Jones
This article was first published
on guardian.co.uk at 14.14 GMT
on Wednesday 7 January 2009.
It was last updated at 14.16 GMT
on Wednesday 7 January 2009.

The icy blast continues to grip many parts of the UK after some parts of the country shivered through their coldest night for more than 20 years. The coldest place was Benson in Oxfordshire, at -11.8C – the chilliest night there for 11 years.

But last night was even more of a shock to residents of coastal areas in the south-west who normally enjoy a relatively mild climate even at this time of year. At Culdrose, near Helston in south-west Cornwall, the temperature dropped to -7.8C. It was the second coldest night on record and the chilliest since January 1987.

Steven Morris reports from Somerset, which is enduring some of the coldest weather in the UK Link to this audio
Up the coast in Plymouth, south Devon, it reached -7C, again the coldest for 21 years. At 10am this morning it was still -3.1C in Plymouth and -2.3C in Yeovilton, Somerset. Within the M25 it was -2C at Kenley, near Croydon, at 10am.

Further north it was warming up a little as a band of cloud slowly made its way down the country. North-west Scotland was enjoying a relatively balmy 7C.

Over the next few days it is likely to stay warmer in the north but remain perishing in many parts of the south. There was a dusting of snow in many places in England today, but the Met Office does not believe there are likely to be heavy falls.

In north Wales a primary school had to stay shut after thieves stole an emergency delivery of heating oil. Tania Armstrong-Owen, headteacher of the 50-pupil Ysgol Rhewl in Ruthin, branded the thieves "callous" and said the primary school could be closed until Friday.

"I am absolutely appalled," she said. "It is a really close community and we are a small and rural school. We take it quite personally. It is devastating really. I think it is despicable to target a small primary school. They ripped off the lid of the tank and took between 800 and 900 litres. It's bitterly cold in the school and we are closed today."

Tens of thousands of motorists were left stranded yesterday, a record day for car breakdowns. The AA and RAC said the situation was the worst for five years; they dealt with an estimated 50,000 call outs over two days.

Among the victims of perilous driving conditions was a woman cyclist who was seriously injured when she was run over by a Land Rover that skidded on ice in Clevedon, Somerset. In Dorset a man escaped injury after his BMW 325 convertible spun off the road and hit a telegraph pole near Bournemouth International airport.

In Devon and Cornwall police warned drivers to delay journeys after seven crashes, including two multi-car collisions. Many breakdowns were recorded in the Bristol, Bournemouth, London and Birmingham areas.

Welsh Water apologised to customers in the Rhondda Fach area of south Wales who may experience problems with their water supply as a result of the cold snap, and pensioners have been advised to take extra precautions to make sure they keep warm.

The elderly and vulnerable are receiving a £25-a-week heating bill subsidy from the government. The payout – which is triggered when an area's average temperature falls to 0C or below for seven consecutive days – has so far cost more than £100m. The freeze sparked calls from Macmillan Cancer Support for the government to extend winter fuel payments to cancer patients.

For some people, though, the harsh weather has unusual rewards: in central London shivering tourists saw the fountains in Trafalgar Square freeze.

Coldest night for 20 years in parts of southern England, G, 7.1.2009,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/07/freezing-weather-britain

Snow, Cold, Storms

Pound the Midwest

January 30, 2008
Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- Severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and fierce winds sliced through the Midwest and took aim at the Northeast early Wednesday, leaving behind bitterly cold air and blizzards in the northern Plains that sent temperatures in some areas plummeting by 50 degrees in a few hours.

The bad weather reached upstate New York by early Wednesday and forecasters warned that the arctic blast would send mercury tumbling across the Northeast and New England.

''This is going to be a hard, vicious slap in the face from Mother Nature,'' Gino Izzi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Romeoville, Ill., said Tuesday night. ''The temperature drop we saw was really spectacular in a bad way.''

The temperature in Buffalo, N.Y., went from a high of 54 degrees Tuesday to 21 degrees by 7 a.m. Wednesday, with winds gusting to more than 60 mph. Power was out in 40,000 homes and businesses, roads were slick and most schools in the Buffalo area were closed.

In northern Illinois, high winds downed power lines and knocked trees onto utility lines, causing nearly 14,000 customers to lose power overnight, mostly in Chicago's south suburbs, said ComEd spokeswoman Judy Rader. Service to all but 1,300 had been restored by Wednesday morning.

Thousands also were without power in Ohio and Illinois. In Michigan, Lower Peninsula residents were in the dark as blizzard conditions hit the western and northern parts of the state.

The winds and thunderstorms may have killed two people in Indiana on Tuesday, authorities said. Firefighters in southwestern Indiana pulled two bodies from a mobile home near Evansville that had been turned on its side by winds in a thunderstorm, WEHT-TV reported.

Wind gusts as high as 70 mph created problems for air travel and avalanche warnings were issued for some Western regions. Tornadoes or reports of tornadoes surfaced in several communities in the nation's midsection.

''I wouldn't call it a common occurrence to see winds this strong with this kind of snow,'' Izzi said. ''This isn't something we see every year.''

The system also dragged frigid air across the northern Plains. The Weather Service reported midday temperature Tuesday of minus-24 degrees at Glasgow, Mont. North Dakota registered wind chill factors of minus-54 degrees at Garrison, while Williston hit a low of minus-24 degrees.

Most of Minnesota was under wind chill warnings until noon Wednesday due to indexes that fell into the minus-30 degree level. It was as low as 50 degrees below freezing in Hibbing.

Though only light snow fell in western, central and eastern Iowa on Tuesday, winds snapping as fast as 60 mph caused visibility problems, and temperatures dropped into single digits.

''It's a little worse than your average snowstorm,'' said Rod Donovan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines, Iowa.

Some 1,500 workers went home early from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., while critical medical staff were put up in hotels so they could stay close to serve patients. The blustery winds also put flight operations on ice at the Rochester airport.

In Cape Girardeau County, Mo., winds were as strong as 70 mph and dime-size hail fell. Two unconfirmed funnel clouds were reported, said Dick Knaup, the county's emergency management director.

The weather week began with heavy snow pummeling mountain areas from Washington state to northern Arizona as two storms converged, one from hard-hit California and another from the Gulf of Alaska, meteorologists said.

The storms were followed Tuesday by a third that threatened to leave up to 20 inches of snow in Idaho's mountains, said Jay Breidenbach of the Weather Service office in Boise, Idaho.

A fourth storm was on the way to the interior West: ''By Thursday, the next storm will be right on our doorstep. This is quite a storm system,'' Breidenbach said.

In the snow farther west, avalanche danger forced officials to close Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass, Washington state's main east-west artery across the Cascade Mountains. The pass was to remain closed until Wednesday morning, Meagan McFadden of the state Department of Transportation said.

More than 200 trucks were backed up at North Bend, waiting to move freight across the pass. On a typical weekday, as many as 7,000 trucks travel I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass, she said.

Snow also closed highways in Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming.

Two of three snowmobilers lost in the mountains west of Denver were found late Tuesday, said Summit County sheriff's spokeswoman Paulette Horr. The third was still missing.

In Oregon, two snowmobilers were rescued Monday after spending two nights in the Wallowa Mountains, where they were trapped by storms. Authorities said the two were dressed warmly and equipped with survival gear, matches and an avalanche beacon.

------

Associated Press writers P. Solomon Banda in Denver; Sophia Tareen and Michael Tarm in Chicago; Henry C. Jackson in Des Moines, Iowa; Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho; and Arthur H. Rotstein in Tucson, Ariz., contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

Weather Service warnings:

http://www.weather.gov/view/nationalwarnings.php

Snow, Cold, Storms Pound the Midwest,
NYT, 30.1.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Winter-Storm.html

New England

Gets New Blast of Snow

January 14, 2008

Filed at 12:00 p.m. ET

The New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOSTON (AP) -- New England's first major winter storm of 2008 snarled the Monday morning commute with heavy snow and closed hundreds of schools.

Following the snowiest December on record in some parts of the region, and a spell of spring-like warmth, meteorologists said as much as 14 inches of snow was possible in southern New Hampshire and areas west and north of Boston.

Many communities declared snow emergencies in advance of the storm and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ordered only essential city employees to report to work.

Snow piled up quickly with 11 inches by late morning at Winchendon, in north-central Massachusetts, the National Weather Service said. Pine Plains, N.Y., near the Connecticut state line, reported 7 inches, and Burlington, Conn., had 6.5 inches. The Boston area had about 5.

Kaj Munic was up at 4:30 a.m. plowing the heavy, wet snow off driveways in Columbia, Conn. ''You have to hit most places at least twice,'' said Munic, a 59-year-old contractor.

Hundreds of public and private schools canceled classes for the day in anticipation of the snow in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island and parts of eastern New York.

School officials were taking no chances, especially after a Dec. 13 storm in which many youngsters in Providence, R.I., were stuck on buses for hours. That storm also caused monumental traffic jams around Boston.

Numerous flights were canceled at airports including Boston's Logan International and Maine's Portland International Jetport.

''We are open, but capacity is very low because airlines made decisions yesterday and (Monday) morning to cancel many of their flights,'' said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority.

Utilities reported scattered power outages, including a peak of more than 36,000 homes and businesses blacked out in Connecticut, said Mitch Gross, a spokesman for Connecticut Light and Power. More than 9,000 lost power in Massachusetts.

''It's the issue of heavy wet snow taking down trees or tree branches, which are taking down wires,'' Gross said.

The New Hampshire Legislature canceled all events.

Authorities said major highways were slick and a number of accidents and spinouts were reported. But volume was lighter than usual as many commuters apparently heeded storm forecasts.

''Right now, we're not seeing the traffic that we would normally see on a Monday,'' said Massachusetts State Police Lt. Eric Anderson.

The snowfall was lighter than expected in some areas, with the Connecticut measurements falling short of the predicted accumulation of up to 14 inches. Initial forecasts for New York City's northern suburbs were for as much as a foot, but the metro area got mostly rain.

So far this winter, Concord, N.H., has gotten 54 inches of snow, nearly 44 inches has fallen at Portland, Maine, and Bangor, Maine, has totaled 49 inches.

------

Associated Press writers Steve Feica

in Hartford, Conn.,

Dave Collins in Windsor, Conn.,

and Pat Eaton-Robb in Columbia, Conn.,

contributed to this report.

New England Gets New Blast of Snow,
NYT,
14.1.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/
aponline/us/AP-Northeast-Snowstorm.html - broken link

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