Agencies :Record-breaking cold that gripped the U.S. East and Midwest on Thursday snarled travel, shut schools, filled homeless shelters and even led to zoo penguins being ordered inside.Snow expected to accumulate to 3 feet (1 metre) deep was falling in upstate New York near Watertown, and snow already blanketing South Dakota was whipped by winds into a “ground blizzard” that made driving treacherous, said meteorologist Dan Petersen of the National Weather Service.The coldest place in the country on Thursday was Estcourt Station, the northernmost point in Maine, with temperatures of minus 38 degrees F (minus 39 C), he said.Records were broken from Montpelier, Vermont, at minus 20 F (minus 29 C), to Jackson, Kentucky, with minus 1 F (minus 18 C), he said. Snow flurries were reported as far south as Jacksonville, Florida.”It’s the face, it’s like being hit with a sheet of ice,” Bart Adlam, 40, president of U.S. yogurt supplier siggi’s, said as he rode a bike through Times Square on his way to work at 8 a.m. in New York. The wind chill there made 9 degrees F (minus 12 C) feel like 2 below (minus 18 C), according to Weather.com. Cold bitter enough to freeze fuel lines on school buses forced schools to close from Portland, Maine, to Chicago. Train rails cracked by the cold caused delays for commuters in Washington, D.C. Weather also hung up U.S. air travel with 1,937 delays and 515 cancellations by mid-afternoon, according to FlightAware.com.In Pittsburgh, two baby African penguins were moved indoors at the National Aviary, where the endangered animals that are native to South Africa will remain until temperatures rise.
