Washington: A record-shattering arctic blast has reached as far south in the US as Florida, with freeze warnings in place from Texas to the Atlantic Coast.

Temperatures dropped up to 17 degrees Celsius below normal across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. 

Along Alabama's Gulf Coast, the temperature in the city of Mobile could hit a low of minus 9 Celsius overnight. Stiff breezes were expected to create dangerously cold wind chills across south-eastern Georgia and most of north-eastern Florida, the weather service said.

The only part of the US spared the deep freeze is the south-west, with above-normal temperatures and dry weather expected to linger there, the weather service said. 

Michael Kimberl, co-founder of Sean's Outpost, an encampment for homeless people in Pensacola, Florida, said he was handing out propane fuel and extra blankets to residents.

"Our community is very unequipped for weather of this type," he said. Homeless shelters were also making special accommodations, including one site available for women and children.

"That degree of cold will be with us until tomorrow," said Brian Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist at College Park, Maryland, on Monday US time. "Tuesday morning, we're looking at temperatures with very high probability of record lows."

The mass of frigid air pumped south by a dip in the jet stream sent temperatures plunging across the US heartland. Omaha, Nebraska, posted a low of minus 29 C, breaking a 130-year-old record, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, shattered a record set in 1919 with a temperature of minus 36 C.

The cold will be unrelenting across the Middle Atlantic and north-eastern US, with up to two dozen low-temperature records expected in those regions over the next day or two, Hurley said.

Although the cold should ease across most of the US after Tuesday, local time, the north-eastern quarter of the country will see a repeat of the frigid temperatures from Thursday to Friday as another arctic blast hits the area.

The private AccuWeather forecaster said the cold snap could combine with a storm brewing off the Bahamas to bring snow and high winds to much of the eastern seaboard as it heads north on Wednesday and Thursday.

Reuters