Winter Returns to East Coast for an Encore
Most thought the cold weather was over and done with. But just like the villain in a horror movie, winter came back to wreak more havoc this week.
In Virginia, a 750-foot cargo ship lies beached Wednesday morning in the Chesapeake Bay after 70 mile-per-hour wind gusts pulled it off its anchor overnight.
The same system brought snow to New York City and other parts of the Northeast overnight, dropping temperatures by as much as 40 degrees, and bringing back the snow that so many didn't want to see again.
"We don't want to hear that four-letter word," one resident said.
The Buffalo, N.Y., area, which saw 78 degree temperatures a few days ago, found itself preparing for several inches of snow.
"We'll probably be out plowing tonight," one resident lamented.
Detroit shattered a 133-year-old snowfall record.
"We didn't need much, we only needed 1.3 inches as of midnight and looking around at the totals, we've definitely broken the record," AccuWeather meteorologist Dean DeVore told CBS Detroit. "For the storm itself, we got 3.1 inches."
In the South, snow was falling on flowers already in bloom. Meanwhile, temperatures are hovering near freezing -- a real threat to crops.
"Pretty much their most vulnerable time," one person noted.
Farmers scrambled to protect their crops.
"If we start dropping below 30 we're entering an extreme," one farmer said.
Fierce winds also did their share of damage. In Georgia's Cobb County, a tree split a house in two, trapping two women inside.
The whole tree was lying across their legs, so one of them, one of them was real bad," neighbor James O'Neal said.
"You're just helpless," another neighbor, Ricky Price, said. "You've got a tree this big around laying on two ladies."
There were also damaging winds near Philadelphia.
"I thought it was a tornado so I went back down to the basement," one resident said.
In addition, there's been flooding from Michigan to New York to Vermont and several states in between.
Meanwhile, world leaders, including President Barack Obama, continue to blame the record-setting winter weather on global warming.
But the United States has seen this kind of weather before, 200 years ago during a period called the Little Ice Age.