Eds: Updates with forecast for record cold Friday, snow totals. Will be updated. With AP Photos. ADVERTISING Eds: Updates with forecast for record cold Friday, snow totals. Will be updated. With AP Photos. PHILADELPHIA (AP) — When the late-season snow
Eds: Updates with forecast for record cold Friday, snow totals. Will be updated. With AP Photos.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — When the late-season snow stops falling after leaving accumulations from Texas to Long Island, winter has one more blast for much of the U.S.: record low temperatures are in the forecast for dozens of cities.
By midmorning Thursday, a strong cold front moving across the eastern U.S. had dumped more than 20 inches of snow into parts of Kentucky, and it was starting to pile up in the Mid-Atlantic region. The National Weather Service had winter storm warnings in effect from Texas to Nantucket.
Schools, government offices and legislatures in the South and Northeast were shut down for what could be one of the last snow days at the end of a winter that’s been brutal for much of the country.
Here’s a look at what’s happening:
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COLD HANGING AROUND?
Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at Weather Bell Analytics, said cities including Waco, Texas; Chicago, Memphis and Cleveland should expect record cold Friday morning.
In some cases, the old records could be obliterated.
In Memphis, for example, the coldest temperature on record for March 6 is 20 degrees. The forecast is calling for a low of 11. And at northern Virginia’s Dulles Airport, a forecast low of 7 would shatter the record of 15.
“This is amazing for early March,” he said of the Thursday-Friday, one-two punch of snow and cold.
For those awaiting spring, there’s a hint of good news: Unlike the persistent deep-freeze experienced by much of the country in February, this one shouldn’t hang around as long.
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IS HIGHER FARE FAIR?
With the nation’s capital under a snow emergency, cab rides are more expensive.
The D.C. Taxicab Commission said snow emergency fares would be in effect from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. That means cabs can add a $15 surcharge to the metered fare. It’s meant to entice drivers to keep working.
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POWER KNOCKED OUT
The storm knocked out power to 40,000 homes and businesses in West Virginia on Thursday. The northern and western parts of the state were hardest hit.
Officials warned that restoring power could be difficult because of road closures from high water in many spots.
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BLOWING UP ICE
Officials in the Sebewaing, a village in northern Michigan, were planning to use explosive charges to break up ice in the Sebewaing River in an effort to prevent flooding.
It’s the second year in a row that the strategy is being used and comes as temperatures across the upper Midwest remain bitterly cold — below 0 in some places in Minnesota.
Both years, the ice has been about two feet thick.
Before last year, explosives had not been used to break up the ice since 2001.
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CONGRESS FLEES FLURRIES
The weather forecast got Congress going and produced rare bipartisan agreements in the House and Senate to finish business early and get out of town.
Senate leaders set the last vote of the week for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. But that wasn’t good enough for Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma.
“Is there any way you could change that to 2:20 from 2:30?” Inhofe asked on the Senate floor. “There are four people who can’t make planes, otherwise.”
He was accommodated.
More than 3,000 flights have been canceled for Thursday nationwide.
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OYSTER CAGES ON THE LOOSE
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation wants fishermen, boaters and coastal residents to be on the lookout for what may seem like strange items amid the winter storm: missing oyster cages.
High winds, ice and snow caused about 175 cages to break loose and drift into the bay, foundation spokesman Chuck Epes told The Daily Press (https://bit.ly/1KqkrzU ). At least 70 cages have been found.
Epes says the cages are used by Tangier Island, Virginia, watermen to grow oysters. They are about 3 feet long, 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep and are fixed to black plastic floats.
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BEWARE OF PRICE GOUGING
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey says the state’s price gouging laws are now in place.
The anti-gouging law kicks in when the governor declares a state of emergency or state or preparedness. Gov. Earl Ray Tomlin declared a state of emergency Thursday and mobilized state resources as a winter storm threatened to dump up to a foot of snow on the state.
The state’s anti-gouging laws prohibit any person, business or contractor from inflating the price of a consumer item by more than 10 percent of what it sold for 10 days before the declaration.
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TWO MORE INCHES, PLEASE!
Some Bostonians were clamoring for a little more snow to break a record.
This winter, the city has received 105.5 inches of snow — more than 8 1/2 feet, the National Weather Service said. The record is 107.6 inches recorded during the 1995-96 season. Records date to 1872.
Having endured weeks of misery, residents such as Erin O’Brien insist they deserve bragging rights — otherwise, what was the point of repeatedly digging out?
“I want the record. We earned the record,” said O’Brien, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Amy Ouellette, a marketing associate in Salem, north of Boston, just wants spring to melt it all away.
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Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Jeff Amy in Jackson, Mississippi; Jessica Gresko in Arlington, Virginia; and Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.
