Cold snap blamed for deaths, cancelations

TOLEDO, Ohio — Already winter-weary parts of the Midwest and East Coast are dealing with a mounting number of weather-related headaches, from highway pileups to frozen pipes and a rash of car thefts. And there’s more to come.

Bitter temperatures and snow squalls have been blamed for a handful of deaths and canceled a long list of New Year’s celebrations.

Icy roads in central Michigan caused more 30 crashes Friday on highways near Flint while a chain-reaction crash involving about 40 vehicles in the southwestern part of the state left three hurt.

Coastal South Carolina saw a rare bout of freezing rain and drizzle on Friday that forced bridges from Charleston to Myrtle Beach to shut down for de-icing.

Police in the Cincinnati area say a half-dozen cars have been stolen in recent days after being left running unattended by owners trying to warm them up. Cincinnati police warned in a tweet that leaving your car running means “the only person who will be warm is the thief who stole your car.”

More snow is on the way in Erie, Pa., where 65 inches have fallen since Christmas Eve. Now parts of the surrounding county could get up to 16 inches of more snow by Sunday.

A call center set up to help people dig out has been overwhelmed. “The phones have been ringing off the hook,” said Josh Jaeger, a coordinator for the center told the Erie Times-News.

Cleanup continued inside Michigan State University’s basketball arena after a frozen water pipe burst and flooded a hallway, but the mess wasn’t expected to interrupt a game Friday.

Frigid conditions in Boston took their toll on the nation’s fifth-largest transit system.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has spent heavily to winterize what’s known as the “T” since it was crippled by recordbreaking snowfall in 2015. But the agency reported “severe delays” on one of its lines Friday, citing a broken piece of track and a disabled train, among other problems.