US braces for more freezing cold as winter storm leaves at least 29 dead

(AP) - Many in the United States faced another night of below-freezing temperatures and no electricity after a colossal winter storm heaped more snow Monday on the Northeast and kept parts of the South coated in ice. At least 29 deaths were reported in states afflicted with severe cold.

Deep snow — over a foot (30 centimetres) extending in a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometre) swath from Arkansas to New England — halted traffic, canceled flights and triggered wide school closures Monday.

The National Weather Service said areas north of Pittsburgh got up to 20 inches (50 centimetres) of snow and faced wind chills as low as minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 degrees Celsius) late Monday into Tuesday.

The bitter cold afflicting two-thirds of the US wasn't going away. The weather service said Monday that a fresh influx of artic air is expected to sustain freezing temperatures in places already covered in snow and ice. And forecasters said it's possible another winter storm could hit parts of the East Coast this weekend.

A rising death toll included two people run over by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, fatal sledding accidents in Arkansas and Texas, and a woman whose body was found covered in snow by police with bloodhounds after she was last seen leaving a Kansas bar.

In New York City, officials said eight people were found dead outdoors in the course of the frigid weekend.

There were still more than 670,000 power outages in the nation Monday evening, according to poweroutage.com. Most of them were in the South, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee.

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