Cold weather life or death for some

Thousands of youngsters got a second day off from school Tuesday in the midst of a fierce cold wave blamed for at least seven deaths.

A mass of cold air surging down from the Arctic stretched from the northern Plains through New England and temperatures were below zero as far south as the mountains of West Virginia, but warmer weather was on the way.

With a Tuesday morning low of 6 degrees below zero, Milwaukee kept its schools closed for a second day, idling some 90,000 children. On Monday, the city fell to 12 below with a wind chill of 31 below.

Many schools in western New York also were shuttered for a second day, including the 34,000-student Rochester district.

Temperatures had started easing Tuesday in places where the cold was the worst. After Monday's low of 38 below zero, the northern Minnesota town of Hallock reported a Tuesday morning reading of just 9 below, the National Weather Service said. Grand Forks, N.D., had risen to 5 below by 7 a.m. Tuesday, after Monday's record 31 below zero.

Pockets of intense cold lingered, however, including 29 below on Tuesday at International Falls, Minn., snug up against the Canadian border.

"It's bitterly cold ... (but) the coldest of it is over," said Mark Ratzer, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Romeoville, Ill., near Chicago. The Tuesday morning reading at O'Hare International Airport was zero, compared to minus 10 some 24 hours earlier.

Homeless shelters across the region tried to keep the most vulnerable people safe. Repairers of the Breach, a daytime facility for the homeless in Milwaukee, had expanded its hours to stay open 24 hours since Friday as the temperature plunged below zero. The shelter doesn't have beds but provides blankets, pillows and meals for people who had nowhere else to go because other shelters were full, said MacCanon Brown, executive director. Fifty-one people stayed there Sunday night.

"Once this cold spell hit, we were just so aware that there are so many people outside or in unheated places," Brown said. "We know that there would be a lot of deaths and terrible frostbite and hypothermia if we weren't open."

Without the center, "most of them would be living in bushes, unheated garages, abandoned buildings," Brown said. "They do come in our door. They feel very welcomed."

The wind that drove the cold air also picked up moisture from the Great Lakes and turned it into 3 to 4 feet of snow on New York state's rural Tug Hill region, notorious for heavy snowfalls.

Because of the cold and snow, Amtrak shut down passenger service in parts of New York state on Monday and canceled two trains scheduled to run between St. Louis and Chicago.

Xcel Energy asked its Upper Midwest customers in North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, South Dakota and Wisconsin to conserve electricity over the next few days to reduce strain on the power grid. The company said it has enough electricity supplies "but it is possible that electricity reserves could tighten as people begin to use more during evening hours."

The cold was too much for plumbing across Chicago, and crews were sent to more than 1,000 reports of frozen pipes, said Department of Water Management spokesman Tom LaPorte.

Frozen pipes closed one downtown Chicago Starbucks for several hours Monday, and employee Jerry Berry said some customers stood in disbelief for several moments before moving on to the next shop a few blocks away.

"We couldn't brew coffee because it was so cold," Berry said. "(This is) the worst day to have to have a situation like this."

The cold contributed to two weekend deaths in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Ohio and Illinois, authorities reported.

Another death was reported in the Washington area _ Annie Mae Anderson, 81, of Silver Spring, Md., was found dead Monday in a wooded area behind the house she shared with her brother, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a Montgomery County police spokesman.

Anderson, who suffered from dementia, apparently wandered away from the house without a coat, Burnett said. She was found 12 hours after she was reported missing, and authorities said she appeared to have died from exposure to the cold weather.