The Numbing of America

By KURT ANDERSEN

Snow and chilling frosts and death beneath the Potomac's icy waters

Cold, so awfully cold. It seemed as if winter's hard core had descended from out of the Arctic all at once, freezing not just a town or a city here and there, but giving nearly the whole U.S. a case of chilblains. The week began with thermometers reading lower than they had in decades, a century, ever. Then the astonishing chill spread, breaking weather records all week long in 75 cities.

There was at first a certain shivery merriment, a sense of shared rigor. "For a few hours," E.B. White once wrote of extreme cold's onset, "all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive." But as the cold settled in, White's "clear and congenial task" proved too much for some of the frail and the elderly, for luckless travelers exposed for too long a time to the bite of winter. By week's end more than 230 people had died, victims of hypothermia (low body temperature), heart attacks and a variety of icy disasters. By far the most tragic accident was the crash in Washington, D.C., of a Florida-bound Boeing 737 that plowed across a traffic-clogged bridge over the Potomac and plunged into the icy river. The death toll: 78, including three infants. The most prominent explanation of the crash cited ice that may have glazed the plane's wings and tail, and could have acted as a drag on the aircraft as it took off during a snowstorm (see following story).

By sundown Monday, the weather had achieved folk-epic status, and the day was being widely touted as The Coldest of the 20th Century. Statisticians at the National Weather Service were unwilling to go that far. Yet it was they who confirmed that, indeed, alltime low-temperature records were broken in Chicago (--26DEGF) and Augusta, Ga. (1DEG), among other places, while Atlanta ( -- 5DEG), Milwaukee (--25DEG) and Cincinnati (--14DEG) had not been so cold since the 1800s. Single-day records for the date were set in Washington (2DEG), Philadelphia (1DEG), St. Cloud, Minn. ( -- 30DEG), and in nine Florida cities, including Miami (33DEG), Orlando (23DEG) and Tallahassee (14DEG). The cold in Florida froze perhaps 84% of the state's unharvested citrus, and the ripened vegetable crop was wiped out entirely.

Experts groped for images of suitable enormity to describe the far-reaching cold wave. Meteorologist Robert Case of the National Weather Service called it simply "a glob, a monster." In essence, a frigid, unusually slow-moving air mass formed over Alaska and the Yukon, cooled further, and then was plunged suddenly southward through a high-altitude channel of powerful winds. Another National Weather Service meteorologist, Amet Figueroa, traced the violent cold even farther afield. Said he: "It has its origins in Siberia, where it's been lying for the past couple of weeks." The consequences of the Arctic cold sweep were global. The same air mass refrigerating the U.S. helped set records and disrupt life all over Europe. All of the weathermen agreed that the continuing frigidity was extraordinary. Said Case: "It was the type of mass outbreak, in size and severity, that we see once every 50 years." Strong winds made the cold even more bitter. In Chicago, the wind-chill factor was calculated at --81DEG. Even for weather-jaded NWS Meteorologist Roger Bygrave of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., where the temperature bottomed out at -- 36DEG (one degree short of an all time record), the conditions were startling. Said he: "It was a once-in-a-century setup to be so cold and so windy at the same time."

And, almost everywhere, it snowed. In western Montana, 40-ft. drifts foiled efforts to reclaim two bodies from a private-plane crash. Near South Bend, Ind., 107 travelers were blizzardbound for a night in a state police barracks. Buffalo had a snowfall record: 25 in. in 24 hours. In the South, snow of any depth is a shock, and snow fell in every Southern state, in some for three days running; as much as 5 in. piled up in Georgia.

Home-energy supplies across the country were overtaxed. Power lines in Alabama grew icy and brittle and then snapped, leaving nearly 1 million people without electricity for up to five days. As the weather broke records, so did efforts to cope. More natural gas was pumped to consumers in a single day than ever before in New York City, Baltimore, Washington, Louisville, St. Louis and Chicago.

It was not enough to save some of the cold-struck. In New York City, John Bohlman, 90, and his wife Rose, 86, had plenty of heating oil in their furnace. But the fuel pump broke; the couple, both deaf mutes, were unable to signal neighbors for help and froze to death. Near Pendleton, S.C., Margaret Swaney's new wood-stocked heater malfunctioned and started a fire; her three teen-age children were killed. Herbert Ahlstedt, 54, of Level Plains, Ala., was knocked unconscious by falling, ice-heavy tree limbs. Face down in the snow, he froze and died.

Not only was it simultaneously colder, windier and snowier across a wider swath than anyone could remember, but the harshness seemed to clamp down and stay. On Wednesday a new round of snowstorms rose in Arizona and New Mexico, moved east into Texas and covered the Waco area with up to a foot of snow. A blizzard struck the Great Plains on Friday and the Great Lakes states on Saturday; Midwestern temperatures once more fell into the --20DEG to --30DEG range. Snow fell again on the battered Gulf Coast and the Eastern seaboard off and on during the weekend. By then, each region had endured the storming in its own way. A survey of the hard, white landscape:

THE WEST WORRIES For the most part, the Rocky Mountains and states west were spared weather extremes. Californians' concern focused mostly on forecasts of more rain for the state's northern counties. The hillsides around San Francisco Bay are still waterlogged from weeks of downpours. Residents feared that devastating floods and mudflows, which killed 37 people just a week earlier, might strike again. In Idaho, there was concern about the prospect of warm chinook winds, which could thaw the state's flood-high but now frozen rivers. Boise, Idaho, wedged in a valley, had half a foot of snow and subzero temperatures, but the most worrisome weather anomaly was a fetid "inversion layer" of smog that blanketed the city. Low temperatures and a dearth of forest forage, Utah wildlife officials say, accounted for the unusual number of deer that were seen roaming cold and hungry through the streets of Salt Lake City.

THE BONE-COLD MIDWEST The Plains states were frigid, even by local standards (22DEG in Omaha and Des Moines, -29DEG in Fargo, North Dakota), but the cold was no real surprise. "There are towns in North Dakota," explained one NWS meteorologist, "that haven't gotten above zero since the year began."

Minnesotans enjoyed a short respite midweek, but raw weather returned on Thursday, when St. Cloud's -30DEG set a city record for the date, and a steady snowfall covered the state. Earlier, in rural southern Minnesota, Karlie Sazama, 17, spent a long night in a car with her boyfriend Robert Schaaf, 19. But this was no teen-age frolic: the couple was stuck for 16 hours in drifting roadside snow. Said Schaaf of their survival: "We tore seat covers off the front seat and wrapped them around our heads and snuggled together."

On Michigan's thinly settled Upper Peninsula, the storms were ferocious. Schools, businesses and most roads were shut down, and mail delivery stopped, as snowdrifts up to 14 ft. high froze solid. Buffeted by 50-m.p.h. winds, giant Mackinac Bridge was closed for only the third time in its history. Actually, last week's new snow was hardly noticeable atop the 3 ft. that had fallen since Dec. 30. With temperatures as low as --17DEG, naturally, Hell (pop. 20) was frozen over.

The historic cold and 30-m.p.h. winds left Chicago streets hushed and nearly deserted. The most prominent and telling sound was the blare of sirens cutting through the frigid city air. Firemen fought eight major fires on Sunday night alone. One on the city's West Side, ignited accidentally by a homeowner who used a blowtorch to defrost his frozen plumbing, ultimately destroyed 15 houses. The fire department had to cope with frozen hydrants and bursting hoses as well as the wind-whipped fires. Retreating from a flaming house, one dispirited fireman kicked at a useless ice-filled hose. "We lost it," he growled. "We're frozen."

In metropolitan Chicago, 16 deaths were attributed to the weather. One of the hypothermia victims was Bertha Heart, 80, who had somehow survived two previous winters without heat in her shabby South Side apartment. Peoples Gas had shut off her gas service in 1979. Explained a company spokesman: "She did not keep to her payment arrangements." Furnace repairmen, Illinois Bell Telephone (which in one day logged 613,000 calls to its Chicago weather information number, six times more than normal) and travel agents, among others, all had as many customers as they could handle. Said Travel Agent Jason Hess of his booming business: "Everybody wants to go to Jamaica or the Bahamas.'"

THE SOUTH IN SHOCK Texas, at least, made it through the cold without widespread calamity. Schools closed for much of the week, and haute Houston seemed to welcome the rare chance to preen in fur coats and fancy down parkas. Some token flakes fell on that city, and one delivery boy said excitedly: "I've only seen it once boy said excitedly: "I've only seen it once before." There were some real problems: power outages were widespread, the Rio Grande Valley's tomato and pepper crops were nearly wiped out. In El Paso, where the streets iced over, 126 minor car accidents occurred during one 1 1/2-hour period. Said a policeman: "It was Demolition Derby."

The South in general is ill equipped to handle severe winter weather. In New Orleans, which had its coldest day in 20 years, one problem is basements: most houses do not have them, and so plumbing is particularly vulnerable to freezing. The combination of pipes bursting in the 16DEG weather, and people continuously running tap water (a common precaution against frozen pipes) left the city with critically low water pressure. Twenty-three miles upriver from New Orleans, a grain elevator in Destrehan (pop. 1,760) burst in the 18DEG cold, spewing out 1.5 million bushels of wheat that crushed an adjacent cafeteria.

Public life nearly ground to a standstill in Mississippi. The main reasons: treacherously icy roads and power outages. In Alabama, 46 National Guard armories served as shelters for the thousands whose heaters were useless in the widespread blackout, and Guardsmen carted generators to remote towns. Birmingham residents were shocked enough by the -2DEG cold, but then the weather became positively weird: multicolored lightning flashed in the night sky. Weathermen speculated that the colors resulted from light-refracting ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Alabama Governor Fob James proclaimed a state of emergency and, in a televised address, chastened his constituents: "Don't get out unless you absolutely have to." Two young couples in the Birmingham suburbs were heedless.

Charles Early and Diane Kelley, together with Douglas, Judy and one-year-old Benjamin Jackson, went on a joyride in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Careering over the snow-covered countryside, the truck plunged into an ice-covered pond. The adults drowned immediately. The baby crawled from the wreck a dozen yards across the ice, fell into the water and died.

Monday was unquestionably Georgia's coldest day of the century. But then snow and freezing rain began on Tuesday. More snow fell on Wednesday. And the day after. In Atlanta, which does not have a single municipal snowplow, the first flurries appeared at the beginning of the afternoon rush hour, and immediately prompted an even more chaotic commuter scramble. Peachtree Street, the city's main thoroughfare, was hopelessly jammed until midnight with stalled and sliding cars. Mused one former Chicagoan: "I feel a little ridiculous being snowbound in 1 1/2 in. of snow." Many motorists simply abandoned their cars. But Virginia Lichlyter, a graduate student at Georgia State University, persevered. Her six-mile commute from school to home took 7 1/2 hr. Thousands of people were marooned overnight in office buildings, shopping malls and a mortuary. Atlantans rushed to stock up on portable heaters, batteries, lanterns and candles. "It's been crazy, totally insane," said Hardware Store Salesman James Hoelscher. "We're sold out of just about everything." In fact, the clamor for survival equipment was not just hysteria: 1,000 Atlanta-area homes were without heat for twelve hours.

In the long run, Georgia farmers stand to suffer more than city folk. According to Thomas Irvin, the state's commissioner of agriculture, cash-crop and grazing acreage both incurred "sizable damage." Said Irvin: "A third of our farmers are already on the borderline of bankruptcy. The storms just put another nail in the coffin."

The threat to Florida's $3 billion agriculture was even more substantial. Only about 20% of the state's oranges and grapefruit had been picked, and as temperatures began edging toward a hard freeze, growers made frantic efforts to save crops. Irrigation pipes in groves covered the trees with a fine, warm mist. Crews worked day and night to harvest citrus crops, helicopters hovered over celery and eggplant fields to circulate warm air, and the tempering flames of oil-fueled smudge pots burned all night long in orange-growing areas. Still the damage was severe. Almost all of the state's orange and grapefruit crops may have frozen, and the Florida citrus commission ordered a ten-day embargo on exports of fresh citrus fruit from the state to prevent the sale of spoiled produce. By the end of the week, the wholesale price of orange juice concentrate had risen by 12%, and Florida's juicing plants were operating around the clock to process the unplanned harvest of frozen fruit.

Florida produce has endured cooler snaps, but the duration of last week's freeze was unprecedented. "The temperatures were just too low for too long," said Tomato Farmer Luis Rodriquez, who estimated his own loss at $1.7 million. Joe Knight of the Florida farm bureau called it "a very democratic freeze," explaining that "it hit everywhere and just about everything." Yet only one human succumbed to the Florida chill. John Thomas Williams of northern Cantonment (pop. 3,241) had been toasting his 51st birthday with friends until he wandered off for some air. He passed out in a ditch three miles from home and died the next day.

IN THE NORTHEAST, THE CITIES SUFFER In Philadelphia and New York City the snow was heavy (8 in. and 9 in., respectively) and the cold unreasonable. The downtrodden and the elderly suffered most of the real pain. In Philadelphia, municipal workers cruised the cold streets in vans searching for endangered vagrants. About 25 were picked up and given shelter and breakfast in firehouses. The roundup missed one man, a "street person" who was found frozen to death after daybreak in a vacant lot downtown. The city also distributed about 250,000 gal. of heating oil to 5,000 needy households. New York, lacking fuel to give away, offered 200 heated apartments instead, for $10 a month.

More than 7,000 New Yorkers daily called a city hot line with complaints about heat and hot water, and 250 inspectors responded, monitoring room temperatures and citing landlords for illegally cold apartments, Denise Gossin, 27, who lives with her two children, ages six months and two years, said that the inspectors took a 35DEG reading inside her two-bedroom apartment in Spanish Harlem. "If I didn't have the oven on," she said, "the whole house would be freezing. We sleep in the kitchen with sweaters on and just pray for warm weather." The city dispatched survival bundles, each including a blanket, gloves, heating pad and cocoa, to any older person who asked for one.

The cold permitted one extravagant demonstration of Christian faith. A Greek Orthodox ritual, performed the week after Epiphany, requires devotees to retrieve a cross that has been tossed into the sea: last week in the frigid Atlantic Ocean off New York's Long Island, the successful retriever was a teen-age boy.

New Englanders would feel cheated if a winter passed without deep snow and a stern, bitter chill. Accordingly, the region's residents largely professed indifference to the ubiquitous cold. Yes, it was -23DEG in Chester, Mass. Yes, the record cold in Worcester (-8DEG) broke a local television station's transmitter and knocked out broadcasting for a day. And, yes, the freezing temperatures in Boston caused subway rails to crack. But stoicism hardly faltered. Said NWS Meteorologist John Pollock of Concord, N.H. (where it was -10DEG); "This is just beautiful New England weather."

Less hearty was Linda Landry, 21, a student at Boston's Northeastern University. Said she of life in an unheated apartment: "Before I went to bed I put on sweat pants, long Johns, four sweaters and three pairs of socks. On top of that I had blankets and a quilt. I still woke up and was so cold I cried." In New Hampshire, where nearly a foot of snow fell in two days, the storms' dangers were taken seriously: firemen in Nashua (pop. 67,865) urged that the town's schoolchildren be conscripted for a day to shovel out buried hydrants.

Weather forecasters were not hopeful about a quick end to the numbing of America. A new blast of supercooled Arctic air was expected to rush deep into the country early this week, once again sending temperatures toward zero and below in the Midwest, the South and the East. That might not be the last. "When it stays very cold," said NWS Meteorologist Nolan Duke, "it's kind of setting up a situation where anything else that comes your way is going to be even colder." His colleague Larry Wilson added a disquieting caveat. "These situations," he warned, "can last for a month." For most of the U.S., where even a brief thaw was still a dream, one week had seemed more than enough. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Ken Banta/Chicago, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by Ken Banta/Chicago

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