Millions of people hunkered down against a deep freeze Sunday to ride out the winter storm that had killed at least 34 people across the United States and was expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
The scope of the storm was nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.
In Tampa, Florida, the thermometer plunged below freezing for the first time in almost five years, according to the National Weather Service—a drop conducive to cold-blooded iguanas falling out of trees. The invasive reptiles typically become immobilized when temperatures drop below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. But they usually wake up with the sun’s warmth.
About 60 percent of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.