A day after a massive winter storm slammed the US east coast with heavy snow, hurricane-force winds and coastal flooding, residents are bracing for a deep freeze.
Forecasters predict that record-breaking cold air and strong winds will set people's teeth chattering like castanets from the mid-Atlantic to New England and that the frigid weather will hang around through the weekend.
The arctic blast could make temperatures feel as low as minus 9.5C from Philadelphia to Boston and make residents of states like Maryland and Virginia shiver from temps around minus 12C. Coastal areas in the northeast.
The storm caused school and business closings, airline and rail service cancellations or reductions and thousands of utilities outages, many of them restored quickly. Some ferry services even had to be shut down along the Canadian coast.
In the South, the winter weather forced portable toilets to be put in place outside Mississippi's Capitol after pipes burst and it caused iguanas to become sluggish and topple from trees in South Florida. Residents of southeast Georgia were treated to a rare 15cm of snow.
Four people were killed in North Carolina and South Carolina after their vehicles ran off snow-covered roads, authorities said. Another fatality was reported near Philadelphia when a car could not stop at the bottom of a steep, snow-covered hill and slammed into a commuter train. A passenger in the vehicle was killed. No one on the train was hurt.
More seasonable weather is expected to return early next week.
