Record-breaking cold sweeps across Northeast

Boston shivered through its coldest day in almost 60 years and New York's Central Park set a Valentine's Day record as a historic cold front swept across the Northeast on Sunday.

Boston's temperature slid to minus 9, the coldest recorded in the city since Jan. 15, 1957, weather.com reported. Central Park saw minus 1, its lowest temperature on Feb. 14 since National Weather Service record-keeping began more than a century ago.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio deployed over 300 city workers to help help provide shelter for the homeless and deal with residents' complaints about heating and hot water.

"It was crucial for us to be front and center on helping the homeless and making sure heaters worked properly," de Blasio said.

The cold will ease a bit Monday, but snow and ice could make travel a mess from North Carolina deep into the Northeast for people returning from the three-day holiday weekend.

The forecast for Raleigh, N.C., called for an inch or more of a wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain. The Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax, Va., is expected to get 1-3 inches of snow and sleet, about the same as Philadelphia.

"Arctic air will be the big story across the northeastern U.S.," weather service meteorologist David Hamrick said. He even alluded to the scourge of previous winters, the polar vortex.

"An eddy of the polar vortex over southeastern Canada, along with strong cold air (flow), is bringing the coldest weather of this winter season from the Great Lakes to New England," he said.

The translation for Providence, R.I.: The mercury dipped to minus 9, a record for the date and the city's coldest day in more than 30 years, weather.com reported.

In Berlin, Conn., authorities opened a warming center after natural gas outages were reported on several streets. Police said fixing the outage would require a Connecticut Natural Gas worker to visit to each affected home. Berlin was struggling with single-digit temperatures and negative wind chills.

"Please have one person at home to allow them to do that. Everyone else in the family can go to McGee Middle School, which is open as a warming center," the police department said in a statement.