Southern US enters a second week of biting cold and prolonged outages

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Four homes blasted by icy winds on an eroding North Carolina island collapsed into the ocean and Florida farmers anxiously waited for frozen plants to thaw Monday as people across the eastern half of the United States coped with more than a week of sub-freezing weather.

Thermometers hovered below freezing throughout the day Monday across the northern U.S. from the Dakotas to Maine, and sub-freezing temperatures were forecast to return to the Southeast overnight, reaching into parts of northern Florida.

As residents of the Carolinas and Virginia dug out from deep snow, more than 70,000 homes and businesses in Tennessee and Mississippi began a second week without electricity since an earlier snow and ice storm inflicted severe damage on power lines and utility poles.

In hard-hit Nashville, Tennessee, Terry Miles said Monday was his ninth day without power. Miles said he has been living with his wife and their dog in a bedroom that he tried to insulate by hanging up blankets. He's cooking and heating water outdoors on a propane grill. On Sunday someone loaned him a small gas generator with enough power to run a couple of space heaters.

“We’re roughing it,” Miles said. “I’ve been camping before and had it easier than this. I feel like Grizzly Adams.”

The death toll has surpassed 110 in states afflicted by the dangerous cold since Jan. 24.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday that hypothermia played a role in the deaths of 13 people found dead outside in the bitter cold, according to preliminary findings. More than a dozen other suspected hypothermia deaths were reported in Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas.

On the East Coast, where a weekend bomb cyclone brought heavy snow and fierce winds, the National Park Service said four unoccupied homes along North Carolina's Outer Banks collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean since Sunday. A bystander recorded one of them toppling into the water. Photos taken by the agency showed piles of debris along the shoreline in the village of Buxton.

The Outer Banks’ narrow, low-lying barrier islands have been eroding for years as rising seas swallow the land. Prior to the latest storm, more than two dozen houses, usually built on stilts at the water's edge, had collapsed since 2020. Most fell in extreme weather.

In Florida, where some farmers spray water on their fruit trees and plants ahead of freezing weather to help protect them from even deeper cold, fern growers were waiting Monday for a protective layer of ice coating their plants to melt away so they could assess damage. Florida got so cold over the weekend that the Tampa-St. Petersburg area saw snow flurries and cold-stunned iguanas were motionless on the ground.

The timing was especially awful for fern growers, who had been busy shipping plants to reach retailers ahead of Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14.

“It is just terrible timing," said Victoria Register, director of sales and marketing at FernTrust, a growers’ cooperative in Seville, Florida. “It’s right in the middle of our busiest shipping time of the entire year.”

In Tennessee, frustrations were growing with the Nashville Electric Service over lingering outages after the earlier storm knocked out power to about 235,000 homes and businesses — about half its customers. More than 20,000 remained without electricity Monday after more than a week, and won't be fully restored until Feb. 9, the utility said.

Nashville Electric Service has defended its response, saying the storm packed more damaging ice than expected. The utility has said more than 1,000 linemen from Nashville and seven states are working on repairs. But trees, branches and power lines remained down across the city Monday.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell announced Monday he's ordering a review of Nashville Electric Service’s storm preparation and response. O’Connell met with utility leaders Sunday and said afterward they were “unequipped to communicate about a crisis.”

And Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee also criticized the Nashville utility, posting on social media: “whoever is responsible for this breakdown should be fired.”

After more than a week of cold-weather warnings across the eastern U.S., the National Weather Service still had a few alerts in effect, including a freeze warning through early Tuesday in south Georgia and most of Florida. Snow was also expected Tuesday across parts of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and in Washington, D.C., where low temperatures in the teens (minus 9 C) were forecast this week.

Nearly a foot (29 centimeters) of snow fell over the weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina's largest city. Gov. Josh Stein’s office said Monday that crews were still clearing interstates and highways.

“We are working around the clock to clear roads and get people back to their daily lives as quickly and safely as possible, but because temperatures will remain low overnight, this process takes time,” Stein said in a news release.

Loller reported from Nashville, Tennessee, and Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Jonathan Mattise in Nashville; Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, New Jersey; and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed.

Austin Bradbury uses a chainsaw to remove a tree above a road Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Debris from collapsed homes litter the shoreline in the Outer Banks village of Buxton, N.C., Feb. 2, 2026. (National Park Service via AP)

ROME (AP) — There is a long tradition of painters depicting real people in their religious art, but the appearance in a Roman church of a cherub that bears a striking resemblance to Premier Giorgia Meloni has sparked a minor scandal for both church and state in Italy.

The diocese of Rome and the Italian Culture Ministry both launched investigations into the recent renovations at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, after photographs of the Meloni-esque cherub were published in Italian newspapers this weekend. Their swift and harsh reactions indicated little tolerance for the profane in a sacred place.

The ruckus has given the basilica, already well known as one of the oldest churches in Rome, newfound celebrity status. It was jammed on Sunday and Monday with curiosity-seekers straining to photograph the angel in a side chapel up near the front altar, at times disrupting Mass.

Meloni, for her part, tried to tamp down the outcry and make light of it.

“No, I definitely don’t look like an angel,” Meloni wrote on social media with a laughing/crying emoji alongside a photo of the work.

The basilica is located on one of Rome’s fanciest piazzas just down the block from the Spanish Steps. It was consecrated in 440 by Pope Sixtus III and subsequently enlarged and rebuilt. It is now the property of the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for its upkeep.

In 2000, one of the front chapels was renovated to include a bust of the last king of Italy, Umberto II. Included in the decoration was a cherub holding a map of Italy, seemingly kneeling down before the king.

That figure is now under scrutiny since the cherub’s face, after a recent restoration, appears modeled on Meloni's. It is problematic because the cherub appears in a position of deference to the king. Italians rejected the monarchy after World War II because of its support for Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini; Meloni's right-wing party has its roots in the neo-fascist party that succeeded Mussolini.

The cherub was restored after water infiltrations damaged the basilica starting in 2023. The parish priest, the Rev. Daniele Micheletti, acknowledged the resemblance to Meloni but dismissed the significance, noting that plenty of artists depicted real life people in their works.

Caravaggio is said to have modeled the Virgin Mary on a prostitute in one of his works; Michelangelo painted himself as St. Bartholomew in the Sistine Chapel’s “The Last Judgement.”

“The priest is not responsible for the decorations in the sense that the owner is someone else,” Micheletti told The Associated Press on Monday in his office, as his phone rang constantly. “So, what do they want from me? I did not do the painting.”

Over the weekend, the Culture Ministry sent a special delegate, Daniela Porro, and ministry officials to the basilica to survey the angel. Their aim, according to a ministry statement, was to “ascertain the nature of the work” and “decide what to do.”

The restorer, for his part, has denied wrongdoing and denied he used Meloni as a model. In interviews with Italian media, Bruno Valentinetti said Meloni was in the eye of the beholder and that he merely restored the original painting, which he himself had made in 2000.

The investigations are looking to determine what the original 2000 cherub looked like.

The vicar of Rome, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, was far less forgiving. He announced an investigation and criticized Micheletti’s blasé attitude in insisting that a political figure had no place in church art.

“In renewing the diocese of Rome’s commitment to the preservation of its artistic and spiritual heritage, it is firmly reiterated that images of sacred art and Christian tradition cannot be misused or exploited, as they are intended exclusively to support liturgical life and personal and communal prayer,” the diocese said a statement.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

A man takes a picture at a restored fresco to the memory of late Italy's King Umberto II depicting Angels inside the Basilica of St. Lawrence in Lucina in Rome, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

People take pictures at a restored fresco to the memory of late Italy's King Umberto II depicting Angels inside the Basilica of St. Lawrence in Lucina in Rome, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A restored chapel with Angels depicted on a fresco to the memory of late Italy's King Umberto II is seen inside the Basilica of St. Lawrence in Lucina in Rome, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A detail of a restored chapel with Angels depicted on a fresco to the memory of late Italy's King Umberto II inside the Basilica of St. Lawrence in Lucina in Rome, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)