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That same bitter chill has settled across the eastern half of the country, threatening crops, closing schools and making Charleston feel more like New York City. Record snows were reported over the weekend in Vermont, and Florida farmers scrambled Monday to save strawberries and tomatoes.
The temperatures are about 20 degrees lower than average for Beaufort County, with highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s expected to continue throughout the week, said Pete Mohlin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston.
The Hilton Head Public Service District had several calls from customers whose pipes had burst, a phenomenon district general manager Richard Cyr said "is real unusual here, because of the warm weather."
Physicians from the Palmetto Poison Center in Columbia are urging South Carolina residents to protect themselves against carbon monoxide poisoning in their homes because this is the time of year when it happens the most often.The number of such incidents usually increases with cold weather because people crank up the heat, according to Dr. William Richardson, the center's medical director.
As the temperatures dipped into the 20s over the weekend, frost damaged the foliage of palmetto trees and philodendrons at the Sunshine Nursery in Bluffton, said Maria Heinzelman, nursery manager.
"This year is much worse than last year," she said.
In Beaufort, customers at Magnolia Bakery Cafe on Congress Street are opting for hot tea, coffee and soup to stave off the cold, said owner Jing Johnsrude.
"In this weather, they go for whatever is comforting them," she said.
And in Hilton Head Plantation, resident Elaine McElhinny saw mullets in the lake behind her home strand themselves when they leapt out of the water and onto sheets of ice. McElhinny extracted a piece of ice from the frozen lake and saved the rarity in her freezer.
"The thickness (of the ice) is almost like a pane of glass," she said.
There's no sign the cold weather will cease before the weekend, Mohlin said, adding there's a 30 percent chance Thursday for that rarest ofLowcountry occurrences -- snow.
If it snows, the flakes won't stick around, Mohlin said, unlike the chill which is expected to last through Sunday.
DEADLY WEATHER
The deep freeze around other parts of the U.S. also will last for at least the rest of the week. The National Weather Service said the mercury could fall below zero in St. Louis later this week for the first time since 1999.
In Burlington, Vt., a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 33 inches, breaking a single-storm record of nearly 30 inches set in 1969.
Most took it in stride, but some took it too far: Vermont State Police cited a man after stopping him pulling a sled -- with a rider in it -- behind his car on Interstate 89 on Sunday. He was cited for driving with a suspended license.
In upstate New York, "lake effect" snow blanketed parts of the state with more than three feet.
In Maine, the search continued for an 18-year-old snowmobiler who disappeared shortly after the storm started Friday night, and a small plane crashed into a river channel there Monday after reporting ice buildup on the wings.
The weather caused hundreds of school closings and delays in Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the North Carolina mountains.
In Nashville, Tenn., where the overnight low was 12 degrees, police believe an 81-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease wandered outside in his bathrobe and froze to death, The Tennessean reported. His body was found early Monday.
Wrecks on icy roads killed at least two other people. A woman died near Mount Nebo, W.Va., when she lost control of her pickup Sunday. And in Washington, D.C., a man died after his car ran off the road Sunday and plunged under a sheet of ice covering a creek.
Homeless shelters, especially in the Southeast, braced for a crush of people and said they would not turn anyone away.
In Florida, farmers prepared for a long week trying to protect their crops. In Polk County -- between Tampa and Orlando -- temperatures were in the high 20s and strawberry farmers turned on sprinklers to create an insulation of ice for the berries.
Parts of central Florida could see lows below freezing nearly every day this week. Even Key West isn't immune. Temperatures there the next couple of days are expected to barely creep above 60 degrees with a stiff north wind -- nowhere near average highs in the 70s that draw winter tourists.
Firefighters are also bracing for more calls this week. Five people died in a fire Friday in rural Plymouth, Mo., likely caused by an unattended fireplace, while three people were killed Saturday in Honea Path when either a space heater or a stove started a fire in a mobile home.
"It's cold and folks are trying to do whatever it takes to stay warm," said David Berry, a volunteer fire chief in Alabama.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
