Snow coats the U.S. in cold

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 6

Snow coats the U.S. in cold

NZPA-AP New York A storm that has blanketed some cities under nearly a metre of snow and killed 49 people, left record fresh falls as it moved over the eastern United States yesterday. A mostly mild February bowed out with a freeze that stung blossoming fruit trees in Dixie. Highways were closed by snow and ice as far south as Birmingham, Alabama, where the interstate system was blocked.

A dozen southern cities from San Angelo, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama, reported record low temperatures. Light snow fell on Atlanta for a second day. In western New York, a state trooper said that a snow-plough would open a road and an hour later it would be covered again with deep snow. “It’s a little like pushing an ocean back with a teaspoon,” he said.

About half of the deaths attributed to the storm were from heart attacks among people clearing away the snow. In Mayville, New York, two small children died of carbon monoxide poisoning .when their mother’s car got stuck in the snow for two hours. In Mason County, West Virginia, a mother; aged 19, of two, was crushed to death when a boulder, pried loose by ice, crashed down a mountainside and slammed through a wall of her house.