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No relief from winter: Cold lingers over much of country

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Low temperatures gripped much of the South, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Wednesday, freezing and refreezing snow and ice and making roads hazardous for those who’d ventured out. In many areas, the cold was expected to stay for days.

The refreeze has already played out over and over in New England, where mountains of snow are piled high. Here’s a look at how people are handling the weather:

In the Baltimore-Washington region, officials urged commuters to leave early and avoid a snowy rush hour.

Forecasts called for a possible 1 to 2 inches of snow between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., with low visibility, high winds, and falling temperatures. Combined, that can make for slick roads and dangerous driving conditions.

Transportation officials say it’s bad timing for a snowstorm.

Talk about a pooper scooper.

A man in suburban Washington, D.C., attached a plow to the motorized toilet, which he had already made for a parade this past summer.

David Goldberg of Rockville, Md., calls the contraption “Loo-cy,” and it comes complete with a toilet paper stand and a magazine rack.

Goldberg posted a YouTube video of himself sitting on the commode while plowing about 4 inches of snow Tuesday in front of a hardware store he owns in Bethesda, Md.

Remember that New York tourism office website that suggested potential visitors should go to the Florida Keys?

Well, its website crashed.

Bruce Stoff of the Ithaca-Tompkins County Convention and Visitors Bureau said nearly 150,000 views crashed the site Tuesday afternoon.

On Sunday, Visitithaca.com posted images of Key West and provided links to Florida Keys websites. The site said, “We surrender” and “Winter, you win” and suggested that a visit to Key West was a better option than frozen central New York.

The upside: Stoff said his office fielded numerous inquiries about tourism in upstate New York.

Here’s an upside to all this snow: It was so deep in Troy, N.H., residents were finally able to capture a black Labrador retriever that was on the lam for three years.

The wily female pup, who’s 3 or 4 years old, had been spotted regularly, but nobody could get close enough for a grab. That changed Sunday night when Courtney Davis and his girlfriend, Tiffany Bennett, spotted her running from an abandoned trailer. Hampered by deep, fluffy snow after a series of heavy storms, the dog couldn’t get away again.

Carl Patten Jr., who’s been keeping the pooch in his heated garage since then, said Tuesday that he’s using two collars on her: one a harness and the other around her neck, just to be safe.

“It’s like Houdini, this dog,” Patten said.

The cold snap affected just about everyone in the Carolinas: Schools closed, people worried about tree limbs falling on homes or pipes bursting, and shelters took in more homeless people.

In Greenville, S.C., Frank Marshall prepared for the deep freeze, bounding from store to store Wednesday looking for bags of rock salt to help melt the ice in his driveway. No luck: Every place was out.

“Nobody has a thing,” said Marshall, 67, a retired truck driver. “You go inside and everything is about spring. Nobody expected this.”

But he joked that if his power goes out, he won’t have to worry about his refrigerated food: “I’ll just put everything outside.”

While much of the rest of the country shivered, the Pacific Northwest experienced a different kind of February, with record-breaking high temperatures. Flowers blossomed, bees buzzed, and the sky was blue. Temperatures crept north of 60 degrees. But low temperatures meant headaches for skiers and snowboarders. Nearly all ski resorts in western Washington have partially or completely closed – there’s not enough snow.

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