Ice covers power lines and the street after a high pressure water main broke in the sub-freezing winter weather in Dunwoody, Georgia, USA, 08 January 2014. Arctic air settled over the eastern two-thirds of the USA, setting numerous record low temperatures, forcing school closings and disrupting transportation amid safety concerns across the region. Wind chill warnings were in effect from the northern Rockies to the Atlantic seaboard with wind chill factors - air temperature compounded by wind speed - estimated as low as -29 Celsius¹ to -45 Celsius, the National Weather Service said.

An arctic blast is slowly easing its grip on much of the United States, forecasters said on Wednesday.

Winds are calming and the weather is warming slightly a day after temperature records - some more than a century old - were shattered up and down the Eastern seaboard.

Many schools were closed for a second day in western New York, or are opening two hours late.

The National Weather Service's first extended blizzard² warning for the Buffalo³ area in 20 years was lifted at 6 a.m. (1100 GMT) on Wednesday, two days after the storm barrelled in with snow and high winds that impacted an area from the state's southwest corner to the Canadian border in northern New York.

The weather service says the storm dumped up to 18 inches (46 centimetres) in the Buffalo area and 27 inches (69 centimetres) east of Lake Ontario.

The plunge⁴ in temperatures led to a water main leak in Brooklyn, flooding some residents' homes.

"At five in the morning we heard fire trucks out here. The water was shooting up in the street. The guy downstairs screamed that there was water in the basement, water was pouring through the basement walls," recounted resident Todd Jacobs.

"We had about six inches, eight inches (15-20 centimetres) of water in the basement," he said.

In Washington commuters also braved frigid⁵ temperatures for a second day, with one woman describing conditions as "cold to the bone".

Meanwhile, temperatures finally climbed above freezing across much of Georgia in the southeastern United States.

The cold weather continued to pose infrastructure⁶ issues from frozen water pipes to water main leaks.

One such leak, in the city of Dunwoody, spewed thousands of gallons (litres) of water high into the air for several hours on Wednesday morning.