Record Low Columbus Day Temperatures Grip Nation

Oct. 9 -- The bottom fell out of thermometers today with temperatureshitting record cold levels from Minnesota to Florida, includingreadings at the freezing point as far south as Alabama.

“I miss the hot weather I was complaining about just a coupleof weeks ago,” said Marlene Anderson, 67, of Lawrenceville, Ga.,where the low was 36. “I was just looking over my winter clothesand thinking, ‘Gee, I need to go out and get some fleece.’”

Anderson raises Cavalier spaniels for show. “They like to goout and sniff around, but when it’s this cold, they’re ready tocome right back inside.”

It was the coldest Oct. 9 in more than a century at St. Cloud,Minn., with a low of 16, and Springfield, Ill., where thermometersbottomed out at 25. Previous records for the date in both citieshad been established in 1895, the National Weather Service said.

Shivering NationRecord books also were rewritten in Alabama, where Huntsvilledropped to 29, and in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, SouthCarolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, the weather servicesaid. Records were tied in New York, Arkansas, New Jersey andVirginia.

Apple pickers had to wait an hour for frost to melt off thetrees before they could start work at the Altamont Orchards nearAlbany, N.Y., where temperatures were around 30.

The late start will mean a late day, said orchard manager JohnAbbruzzese. “Instead of knocking off at five, we’ll work ‘til six,six-thirty,” he said.

Temperatures dipped to about 33 degrees today in Newport, Ky.,as about 2,200 customers of the utility Cinergy sat with no naturalgas for heating. Company officials said crews were working 16-hourdays to repair damage from a gas line rupture that happenedThursday.

Texas-Size Ice StormA branch of the cold wave also reached into the Southwest, wherea weekend ice storm sent tree limbs crashing onto power lines inthe Texas Big Bend area. AEP West Texas Utilities said crews wereworking today to restore power to 4,500 homes. Ice also causedweekend outages in parts of New Mexico.