BRUTAL ARCTIC COLD GRIPS PLAINS, MIDWEST.

Byline: Associated Press 

Your face freezes if you're outside more than a minute or so. And your car, if it starts at all, turns over with a growl that asks: "Where do you think you're going with a wind chill near 90 below?"

Deadly arctic cold that settled in early this week continued to grip the Plains and the Midwest on Thursday.

"Even zero looks good right now," said Steve Perkins, who was reading a newspaper and drinking coffee at a cafe here.

Record lows included 51 below zero in Ely, Minn.; minus 43 at International Falls, Minn.; 36 below in Aberdeen, S.D.; 35 below in St. Cloud, Minn.; minus 33 in Duluth, Minn.; and 25 below in Briggsdale, Colo.

By midmorning, Sidney, Mont., was 30 degrees below zero and had a wind chill of minus 86. The Minot, N.D., Air Force base recorded a noon temperature of minus 33, with a wind chill of 93 below.

The cold even reached to the Gulf Coast, coating roads in Arkansas and northern Louisiana with quarter-inch of ice and prompting officials to open more homeless shelters in New Orleans, where lows in the 20s were expected Friday.

The cold has been blamed for several deaths. A 75-year-old woman in Craig, Mont., froze after she fell near her car and could not get up. In Nebraska, an 89-year-old man died in a house fire started by a space heater used to thaw frozen water lines.

"It takes your breath away," said Ron Dockter, a principal who called off classes for 440 students in Tioga, N.D. "It's brutal out there. We just didn't want to take any chances with buses, and sending children out in this weather."

Jay Krantz, who drives a tow truck for a Bismarck service station, was busy with cars that wouldn't start. Under his coveralls, Krantz wore two pairs of long underwear, jeans, a T-shirt, two more shirts, an insulated flannel shirt, his service station uniform shirt and a winter coat.

"The wind blows right through everything," he said.

In North Dakota and Montana, some people had to cope without power in addition to the cold for about nine hours. About 200 households in Townsend, Mont., were without heat after a gas distribution system broke down. About 350 households in Minto, N.D., were without power when an underground cable broke.

In Burlington, Kan., workers succeeded in melting ice that had clogged the cooling system at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant since Tuesday.

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Roger Kari enters a store Thursday in Embarrass, Minn., despite temperatures of minus 54 degrees. Associated Press