Brutally cold weather expected to hit storm-battered South and Northeast this weekend

Memphis residents were urged to boil water and New Yorkers have been warned that roads could be covered with dangerous black ice this weekend as brutally cold weather sweeps across the regions.

Storms have walloped the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, Plains, South and Northeast with frigid temperatures, heavy snow, ice storms, freezing rain and high winds. Heavier-than-forecast snow fell in New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., on Friday.

More bitterly cold air spilled into the Midwest from Canada on Friday. Several states were under an advisory as forecasters warned that wind chills dipping to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) could be common through Sunday morning.

With a wind chill, temperatures are expected to drop as low as 15 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 26 degrees Celsius) in large portions of Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Kansas, the National Weather Service predicted.

The frigid weekend weather follows two weeks of storms blamed for at least 55 deaths around the country, many of them involving hypothermia or road accidents.

Tennessee recorded 19 deaths alone. They included a 25-year-old man who was found dead on the floor of a mobile home in Lewisburg after a space heater overturned and turned off, said Bob Johnson, chief deputy for the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office.

“There was ice on the walls in there,” Johnson said.

Days of cold broke so many water mains in Memphis, Tennessee, that water pressure fell throughout the city. On Friday, Memphis Light, Gas & Water urged all of its more than 400,000 residents to boil water for drinking or teeth brushing or use bottled supplies.

It wasn’t clear how long the advisory will be in force. While some 50