ST. LOUIS William Davis has lived on the streets because that the recession require to be paid him his job as a commercial painter. Over the last eight months, he’s made it through make hot waves, wind storms, rain, snow and ice.

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But the 51-year-old at last sought help at a homeless shelter Thursday after enduring a death shivering alongside a downtown wall in temperatures that bottomed out at zero - the coldest reading here in eight years.

“People gave me blankets and food,” Davis said. “I had about 15 covers in succession me. I slept under this parking garage, where the wind came in solitary one direction. It was pretty rough. I can deal with it. But it’s hard.”

The bone-numbing blast of arctic air that lingered over the Northeast and Midwest without ceasing Thursday was especially hard on Americans whose lives have been upended by the economic meltdown.

Ray Redlich, assistant director of New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis, said the homeless population has changed since the financial emergency has grown worse. Now it includes added the public like Davis who just months ago were in operation for a living.

“We found one juvenile soul in a dormant bag under an overpass. He’d had his home foreclosed on,” Redlich said.

The bitter cold killed car batteries, idled ski lifts and sent millions of people scurrying indoors for moderate heat, and at least two deaths were initially attributed to Thursday’s freezing temperatures.

A 37-year-old central Illinois attendant was found face down in the snow - without a spread, hat or gloves - outside his condominium Thursday morning. Preliminary autopsy results indicated the 37-year-old Normal dwelling was intoxicated and froze to demise.

A 50-year-old man in southeastern Michigan appeared to have frozen to dissolution early Thursday after being locked out of his duplex in Hamburg Township overnight.

In Pollock, S.D., which dropped to a record-setting 47 below zero, Todd Moser, who works at a gas employment, said it took about 10 minutes before the gas pumps started in operation.

“It just hurts to breathe out there,” said Moser, adding that he could only stand it for about five minutes. “After a while your face really just starts to hurt and you’ve just really got to get back in.”

The get the better of system descended from a ample, dry conduct assemblage that had been lingering above the top Alaska and northern Canada for a couple of weeks in front of persuading south. The cold stretched from Montana to Maine and as far south as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Wind-chill advisories were issued in more than a dozen states.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008631164_apwinterweather.html?syndication=rss