The bottom fell out of thermometers Monday with temperatures hitting record cold levels from Minnesota to Florida, including readings at the freezing point as far south as Alabama.
Greenwood reached a high temperature of 58 degrees Saturday and dropped to a low of 41 degrees by nightfall.
Sunday was cooler, with the high only reaching 54 degrees. The low this morning was 31.
Temperatures today are expected to reach the upper 50s today but will drop into the low 30s tonight.
"We have a nice, big Canadian air mass. It is effecting a third of the eastern United States," said Chris Jakub, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson. "It is going to slowly modify - like 5 or 10 degrees warmer each day."
By Wednesday, temperatures are expected to reach the mid-60s and to reach 70 by Thursday.
"I miss the hot weather I was complaining about just a couple of weeks ago," said Marlene Anderson, 67, of Lawrenceville, Ga., where the low was 36. "I was just looking over my winter clothes and thinking, 'Gee, I need to go out and get some fleece."'
Anderson raises Cavalier spaniels for show. "They like to go out and sniff around, but when it's this cold, they're ready to come right back inside."
It was the coldest Oct. 9 in more than a century at St. Cloud, Minn., with a low of 16, and Springfield, Ill., where thermometers bottomed out at 25. Previous records for the date in both cities had been established in 1895, the National Weather Service said.
Record books also were rewritten in Alabama, where Huntsville dropped to 29, and in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, the weather service said. Records were tied in New York state.
Apple pickers had to wait an hour for frost to melt off the trees before they could start work at the Altamont Orchards near Albany, N.Y., where temperatures were around 30.
The late start will mean a late day, said orchard manager John Abbruzzese. "Instead of knocking off at five, we'll work 'til six, six-thirty," he said.
The cold air also touched off snow showers around the Great Lakes when it started flowing southward during the weekend.
Six inches of snow fell on the mountains lining New Hampshire's Franconia Notch, making a big hit with tourists who turned out to see autumn leaves.
A foot of snow blanketed parts of northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula on during the weekend.
