Southern US enters a second week of biting cold and prolonged outages

By GARY D. ROBERTSON, TRAVIS LOLLER and RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Four homes blasted by icy winds on an eroding North Carolina island collapsed into the ocean and Florida farmers anxiously waited for frozen plants to thaw Monday as people across the eastern half of the United States coped with more than a week of sub-freezing weather.

Thermometers hovered below freezing throughout the day Monday across the northern U.S. from the Dakotas to Maine, and sub-freezing temperatures were forecast to return to the Southeast overnight, reaching into parts of northern Florida.

As residents of the Carolinas and Virginia dug out from deep snow, more than 70,000 homes and businesses in Tennessee and Mississippi began a second week without electricity since an earlier snow and ice storm inflicted severe damage on power lines and utility poles.

In hard-hit Nashville, Tennessee, Terry Miles said Monday was his ninth day without power. Miles said he has been living with his wife and their dog in a bedroom that he tried to insulate by hanging up blankets. He’s cooking and heating water on a propane grill. On Sunday someone loaned him a small gas generator with enough power to run a couple of space heaters.

“We’re roughing it,” Miles said. “I’ve been camping before and had it easier than this. I feel like Grizzly Adams.”

The death toll has surpassed 110 in states afflicted by the dangerous cold since Jan. 24.<...