Warm-up expected after arctic blast

NEW YORK — The blast of arctic air that engulfed portions of the East Coast broke cold temperature records from Maine to West Virginia and stunned sea turtles in Flor- ida — although a warm-up is coming today.

Burlington, Vermont, and Portland, Maine, set records, with Burlington fall- ing to minus 20, beating a 1923 record by a degree and

Portland recording minus 11, also a degree below a 1941 record.

The National Weather Ser- vice said Worcester, Massachusetts, which fell to minus 9 and Providence, Rhode Island, which dropped to minus 3 also set record lows, as did Hartford, Connecticut, where the temperature dropped to minus 9, smashing a 1912 record.

Boston tied a low-temperature record set more than a century ago in 1896 of minus 2. Record low temperatures were also set in parts of West Virginia. The extended period of severe cold has begun to get on the nerves of even the flintiest of New Englanders. Evan Premo, of Marshfield, Vermont, stopped into a Cap- itol Grounds coffee shop in Montpelier for lunch Sunday with his two young sons, aged 5 and 3. “We’ve been stir crazy because we spend so much time outside always so yeah, it’s a challenge,” Premo said. The good news is the bone-numbing air is set to push out of the region. By today, Boston temperatures should return to a more seasonable low 30s. The mer- cury will continue to rise and Boston could see temperatures in the mid-40s by Thursday and as high as the low 50s on Friday.