Winter Weather Blamed For 14 Deaths

Blowing snow and intense cold were blamed for two more deaths on Wednesday — a total of 14 nationwide since the cold wave settled in — and kept schools closed for a second and in some cases a third day across much of Ohio and West Virginia.

The arctic weather disrupted flights from Chicago to the Northeast on Tuesday, leaving some travelers to camp out in airports overnight. Slick roads led to huge chain-reaction traffic accidents, and schools have been closed in places from Minnesota to upstate New York.

There was some relief Wednesday in the Great Lakes region.

Chicago woke up to temperatures around zero with a wind chill of 14 below zero — an improvement over its minus-30 wind chill on Monday. The area was expected to rebound into the low 20s by the end of the week, National Weather Service meteorologist Tim Seeley said Tuesday.

The cold air returned to the northern Plains, though. Hallock, Minn., had a temperature of 27 below zero early Wednesday, the weather service reported.

Residents of upstate New York are digging out from lake-effect squalls that dumped more than 5 feet of snow over a two-day period at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The weather service reported 62 inches of snow at Oswego, 35 miles north of Syracuse.

Despite the snow, most schools in Oswego County were back in session Wednesday. Meteorologists said some areas in the New York lake-effect snow belt could collect more than 100 inches before the system breaks up, which isn't expected until at least the weekend.

In West Virginia, however, schools were closed or had delayed openings in parts of all 55 counties Wednesday. The state's snowfall ranged up to 7 inches at White Oak, the weather service said.

"It was the perfect storm," said Joe Stevens, spokesman for the West Virginia Ski Areas Association. "Over four feet of snow has fallen since the middle of January, which has really turned the situation around for the resorts that were experiencing ... above normal temperatures earlier in the season."

Tuesday brought the coldest readings across West Virginia since Feb. 5, 1996, when several all-time records were set or tied for February, the weather service said. The mountain city of Elkins fell to 16 below zero Tuesday, tying its record for Feb. 6, set in 1979, the weather service said.

In neighboring Ohio, snow and ice had not been removed from most residential streets in Columbus and Cincinnati, and nearly all schools in those areas were closed Wednesday. Most Cleveland schools were closed for a third straight day.

"We had a couple hundred passengers spend the night at the airport because all the hotel rooms in the area were taken, not just because of canceled flights but because highway travel was virtually impossible," said Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport spokesman Ted Bushelman.

In Chicago, more than 140 flights were canceled at O'Hare International Airport. City crews responded to more than 1,000 reports of frozen pipes Tuesday, said Department of Water Management spokesman Tom LaPorte. The cold also hampered firefighting efforts — workers had to use propane torches to thaw frozen hydrants.

And the longer temperatures stay low and the ground stays white, less green will be in people's wallets, CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports from Chicago. Oil and natural gas prices began shooting up as soon as the mercury went down.

Elderly residents of an apartment complex in Chicago said they managed to survive three subzero days without heat, wrapped only in blankets. And as if the cold weren't enough, a new storm front dumped as much as six inches of snow across large stretches of the Midwest, causing dreadful driving conditions, Bowers reports.

The cold and slippery roads had contributed to at least four deaths in Ohio, two in Illinois, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Wisconsin, Maryland and Indiana, authorities said.

Minnesota police reported 290 crashes during rush-hour traffic Tuesday.

Officials in Kentucky were also looking into the possibility that the cold could have led to a fire that swept through a one-story house early Tuesday in Bardstown, killing 10 people; six children and four adults from an extended family, Bowers reports. Two people managed to escape the blaze, one uninjured.

New York state troopers closed a section of Interstate 81 east of Oswego for an hour to remove cars and trucks that went off the road when blowing snow reduced visibility to zero. Ferry service across the Hudson River in upstate New York was suspended because the river began freezing over.