Arctic blast sends temperatures plummeting in Northeast

East Coast residents are bracing for a deep freeze a day after a massive winter storm slammed the region with heavy snow, hurricane-force winds and coastal flooding.

Forecasters predict that record-breaking cold air and strong winds will set people’s teeth chattering like castanets from the mid-Atlantic to New England on Friday and that the frigid weather will hang around through the weekend.

‘This is chilly, chilly stuff,’ Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said on Thursday.

With windchill, temperatures across the Northeast this weekend were most below zero

It’s only expected to get as high as 17 degrees in New York City this weekend 

Some of the most brutal cold will happen in Watertown, New York, where morning lows will be -15 on Saturday and -16 on Sunday 

Lake effect snow is expected in the Great Lakes region this weekend, but the rest of the Northeast should be exempt from more snowfall 

The arctic blast could make temperatures feel as low as minus 15 degrees from Philly to Beantown on Friday and make residents of states like Maryland and Virginia shiver from temps ranging from 10 degrees to 15 degrees. Coastal areas in the Northeast, Hurley said, may experience numbing single digits.

The storm began two days ago in the Gulf of Mexico and first struck the Florida Panhandle. By Thursday it was wreaking havoc as blizzard warnings and states of emergency went into effect along the Eastern Seaboard. Wind gusts hit more than 70 mph in places and some areas saw as much as 18 inches of snow.

The storm caused school and business closings, airline and rail service cancellations or reductions and thousands of utilities outages, many of them restored quickly. Some ferry services even had to be shut down along the Canadian coast.

New Yorkers got back to work on Friday, bundled up in scarves, hats, boots and their warmest winter coats

Commuters had to deal with large snow banks on the sidewalks in New York City on Friday 

Temperatures dipped after Winter Storm Grayson pounded the Northeast, and they are expected to remain below freezing all weekend

Above, a large snowbank on the side of a road on New York’s Lower East Side on Friday

Plows worked around the clock to keep the roads clear during the storm in New York City. Above, a cleared road on the Lower East Side on Friday 

In the South, the winter weather forced portable toilets to be put in place outside Mississippi’s Capitol after pipes burst and it caused iguanas to become sluggish and topple from trees in South Florida. Residents of southeast Georgia were treated to a rare half foot of snow.

In New England, the powerful winds brought coastal flooding that reached historic levels in some communities with icy water overflowing piers, streets and restaurants and stranding some people who had to be rescued.

At least seven people died in weather-related accidents.

Four people were killed in North Carolina and South Carolina after their vehicles ran off snow-covered roads, authorities said. Another fatality was reported near Philadelphia when a car could not stop at the bottom of a steep, snow-covered hill and slammed into a commuter train. A passenger in the vehicle was killed. No one on the train was hurt.

A new storm is brewing and set to hit the Midwest and Northeast late this weekend into early next week 

The storm will start developing on Sunday, with snow expected in parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio 

In Virginia, a girl was struck by a pickup truck while sledding and a 75-year-old man was hit by a snow plow while clearing business parking lots, authorities said. Both died at hospitals from their injuries, police said.

Some of the most painfully cold weather is still to come, Hurley said.

In northern New England, temperatures will be below zero this weekend. The high in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday may only be minus 5 degrees, he said.

Snow falls over Times Square in the midst of the storm on Thursday 

A car sits in floodwaters from Boston Harbor on Long Wharf in Boston on Thursday

Drivers make their way along the flooded Beach Road after the ocean overtopped the seawall during a winter snowstorm in the Boston suburb of Lynn, Massachusetts on Thursday 

Homes in Scituate, Masachusetts take wind and snow from blizzard conditions on Thursday

With the wind chill, it could feel as cold as 30 degrees below in those areas, a dangerous level that could potentially lead to frostbite exposure, warned Carl Erickson, an AccuWeather meteorologist based in State College, Pennsylvania.

The South won’t be spared, either. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia can expect temperatures around 15 degrees to 20 degrees, Hurley said. Northern Florida will be in the 20s to low 30s.

Sunday morning should bring the coldest temperatures from Portland, Maine, to Washington, D.C. ‘That’s when you’ll see records being challenged or broken, with temperatures at or near zero in many places,’ Hurley said.

More seasonable weather is expected to return early next week with temperatures in the high 30s and near 40s, he said. For some, it will feel downright balmy.

A woman wears ski glasses as she walks through the snow toward the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center subway station during the morning commute on Thursday in Brooklyn, New York

Vehicles commute southbound on the Garden State Parkway in whiteout conditions during a snowstorm on Thursday in Eatontown, New Jersey 

Travelers stand with their luggage at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. Most flights in and out of the airport were cancelled on Thursday 

A plow tuck rolls by as Orlando Igmat, of New Milford, New Jersey as he waits for a tow truck to pull his vehicle off a snowbank after skidding off the Garden State Parkway on his way to work