WASHINGTON -
It was that kind of day here in the nation's capital. The coldest air in two years is sweeping through the Mid-Atlantic.
"I hate this cold," said a young tourist visiting from Atlanta. "I'm not coming back until summer!"
At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, enthusiasm for the visit was tempered only by the frigid air smacking their faces.
"It is so still, it's stiff," says Shondale Howard, also visiting from Georgia. "And it feels like ice cubes. My fingertips - they're about to fall off."
That sentiment didn't stop crews from disassembling all that was put in place for Monday's Presidential Inauguration. It is a job being done without too much complaint.
"And it is winter after all, is it not?" asked Barbara Murek rhetorically.
Along the icy Potomac River, we found Canada Geese warming themselves in the setting sun. Only a few braving the chilly water.
A cold winter's night means some humans among us will be weathering the elements outdoors. Some, like 24-year-old Selena Wade, are being picked up and taken to hypothermia shelters.
"It's a place to lay my head," Wade tells us. "And then they take us where we need to go in the morning to get something to eat and stuff like that. It's something to sustain us for just for a little bit."
"I can't give you a definite number (of homeless in D.C. going to shelters Tuesday night), but it's a lot of people that we transport every day to shelters to get them out of the cold and to get them off the street," says Joyce Boone, driving a van for the Hypothermia Hotline. "Those that are willing to go. Everybody's not willing to go, so we provide them with comfort items and blankets for those that just won't go."
We are told there are about a dozen hypothermia shelters open in Washington Tuesday night. At last check, some, but not all, were full.
