The snow and frigid air that have sent homeless people running for cover in much of the country meant cold feet for Mary Jo Copeland.
Copeland, who runs the Sharing & Caring Hands day shelter in Minneapolis, soaked more numb digits than she could count as the mercury fell to 15 below zero Tuesday."I just got a family in with six kids and none of them had socks on their feet. They were really cold," she said. "It's hard to be poor, especially when you're poor in the cold."
The nation's deep freeze continued Wednesday, with temperatures hovering around zero from the Midwest to the East and snowstorms threatening much of the area. Temperatures early Wednesday were 4 in Albany, N.Y.; 2 in Buffalo, N.Y.; 7 in Detroit; 3 in Cleveland; 3 in Portland, Maine; and 10 in Indianapolis.
At least eight weather-related deaths have been reported since the weekend as the wintry weather moved from the Ohio Valley to the East Coast.
Federal employees in Washington were sent home early because of snow, and National Airport shut down for a short time.
Three deaths in the Washington area included two homeless men, one found near a trash container and another in a car that had been his home, and a woman who died in a traffic accident in Bethesda, Md.
The other dead included two people in Indiana; a 64-year-old homeless man found frozen in an alley in Toledo, Ohio; and a woman in Baltimore.