BOSTON

Frigid cold nipped at New England after the region’s fourth winter storm in a month blew through, piling another foot of snow on top of 6-foot-high mounds in Boston, and forecasters said another winter blast might hit midweek.

New Englanders were talking in superlatives — harshest, most relentless — with a winter that has tested their mettle. Forecasters warned Sunday of exceptionally cold air, perhaps the coldest in years. Strong winds were expected to continue into today, reducing visibility, creating drifts and complicating an ongoing cleanup effort.

“It’s historic,” Frank Libby said as he walked down a deserted street in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. “I think we’re in uncharted territory. People just don’t know how to deal with the logistics of it.”

A Deep Freeze

A bone-chilling blast of cold blew into New England as the last snowflakes fell Sunday.

“The big story is subzero air temperatures with wind chills as low as 20 to 40 below zero,” Matthew Belk of the National Weather Service said, adding that exposed skin could start to develop frostbite in “a matter of minutes.”

“The big thing is to dress in layers and don’t go outside if you don’t have to,” he said.

The Arctic cold front already had frozen the upper Midwest, with temperatures in Michigan plunging to minus-27 in the Upper Peninsula.

Allan Tufankjian of Scituate, Mass., said it’s discouraging every time he looks at the forecast.

“If I saw one day that was above freezing, I’d be very happy,” he said. “I looked seven days ahead and every single day, the highest temperature I could see is 26 degrees.”

Planning an escape

The Klose family — Clint, Sue and daughters Caitlin and Kiersten — attacked a mountain of snow in front of their Concord, N.H., house Sunday morning. Just last week, Clint Klose booked a trip for the girls and him to Orlando, Fla.

“You just need a break!” he said. “We need some vitamin D that we’ve been deprived of.”

Klose said the family wouldn’t forget this winter.

“I would say it’s been the harshest winter in the shortest amount of time,” he said. “In the past five weeks, it’s just been a slamming event and a slamming event and a slamming event one after the other.”

Snow totals

Some areas of New England reported nearly 2 feet of snow from the storm including Acushnet, Mass., with 22 inches, and Salisbury with 20.5 inches. Boston recorded 13 inches of new snow. At the easternmost tip of Maine, Lubec had 2 feet. With many intersections already clogged by soaring snow banks, forces mobilized before the storm to remove piles of snow.

Lightning and strong winds

The storm did not bring the eye-popping snow totals of the previous New England storms this season, but made its presence felt with lightning strikes and strong winds that left visibility close to zero for stretches along the coast.

On Cape Ann north of Boston, Patrick McGehee said he was awed by lightning strikes early Sunday when he took his dog outside. “I wasn’t sure what was going on, if it was some kind of spiritual event or what,” said McGehee, the owner of the Mary’s by the Sea summer rental business in Rockport. “The whole sky lit up like somebody lit up a lightbulb.”

The Coast Guard said it rescued an Australian fatherson sailing team whose boat lost power and had its sails torn in 60 mph winds about 140 miles southeast of Nantucket, Mass.. In Vermont, winds forced the shutdown of the Lake Champlain ferry cross between Charlotte and Essex, N.Y.

Southern snow too?

Forecasters say a snowstorm could bring 6 to 9 inches to parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee. Freezing rain was forecast for northern Mississippi and 2 to 4 inches of snow and sleet is possible in north Georgia. A storm also threatened to hit Atlanta, where just over a year ago an ice storm trapped commuters for hours on the region’s freeways.

Belk, the weather forecaster, said that after heading out to sea, the storm may turn north and drop a fresh round of snow on the Northeast on Tuesday, though it’s unclear how much. “The question is whether it grazes by southern New England on its way out to the North Atlantic,” he said.

Why so little

THE NATIONAL WEATHER Service said the snow totals were lowered after the track of the storm’s low took it farther to the east than originally expected. In addition, temperatures in the upper atmosphere remained too cold and dry to produce heavy snow.