'They were just screaming, telling me to help them,' US mother says after brothers, 6, 8 and 9, die in icy pond

Three siblings perished in an icy pond as officials in US states afflicted with severe cold reported at least 45 deaths on Tuesday.

The brothers aged 6, 8 and 9 died Monday after falling through ice on a private pond near Bonham, Texas, Fannin County Sheriff Cody Shook said Tuesday.

The boys' mother said she ran into the freezing lake and frantically tried to pull her sons from the water, but the ice kept breaking beneath them.

“They were just screaming, telling me to help them,” Cheyenne Hangaman told The Associated Press. “And I watched all of them struggle, struggle to stay above the water. I watched all of them fight.”

Brutal cold lingered in the wake of a massive storm that dumped deep snow across more than 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) from Arkansas to New England and left parts of the South coated in treacherous ice.

Freezing temperatures hovered Tuesday as far south as Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina, and were forecast to plunge again overnight. Parts of northern Florida were expected to sink to 25 F (minus 3.9 C) late Tuesday into early Wednesday.

The US aviation system was returning to normal after a brutal weekend that saw more than 17,000 commercial flights canceled. There were 7,000 cancellations Monday and about 2,800 Tuesday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking and data company. Less than 400 were anticipated to be canceled Wednesday.

The arctic misery over the eastern half of the U.S. was expected to worsen Friday and Saturday. The National Weather Service said another winter storm could hit parts of the East Coast this weekend, and more record lows were forecast as far south as Florida.

“This could be the coldest temperature seen in several years for some places and the longest duration of cold in several decades,” the agency’s Weather Prediction Center warned Tuesday.

More than 448,000 homes and businesses remained without power Tuesday evening, with over half the outages in Tennessee and Mississippi. Reconnecting some hard-hit areas could take days. Electric utility Entergy said some of its 6,000 customers in Grenada, Mississippi, might not have power until Sunday.

In New York City, officials said 10 people had been found dead outdoors in the cold.

More deaths were reported across a dozen states. They included two people hit by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, two teenagers killed while sledding in Arkansas and Texas, and a man found in his home in the Indianapolis area with no heat.

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