Schools in the metropolitan areas of New York and Washington, D.C., cancelled classes.
The National Weather Service warned of flooding and told commuters from the lower Mississippi valley to the mid-Atlantic to be wary of dangerous road conditions created by the snow, ice and slush.
Low temperatures shattered records in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, said NWS meteorologist Bruce Terry.
"Even in the deep South, it's very, very cold," Terry said. "It will be another cold night tonight. But we are at the end of this record-breaking cold spell."
The coldest spot in the nation on Friday was Saranac Lake in New York's Adirondack Mountains, where the mercury registered minus 33 degrees Celsius, he said.
Those cities reaching new lows for the day included Detroit at minus 17degC, breaking the previous record of minus 16degC set in 1901. The temperature in Austin, Texas, reached minus 6degC, breaking the previous record of minus 2degC set in 2011.
In Kentucky, where cities were buried under as much as 58cm of snow, Governor Steve Beshear declared a state of emergency on as traffic halted on interstate highways and motorists were left stranded.
A Delta Air Lines plane arriving in heavy snow at New York's LaGuardia Airport from Atlanta slid off the runway and came to rest just feet from the frigid waters of Flushing Bay. No serious injuries were reported.
Just shy of 600 US flights had been canceled as of early Friday morning, according to FlightAware.com, as compared to the 4,957 cancellations tallied on Thursday.
Parts of Massachusetts got up to 19cm of snow, but Boston only received trace amounts, leaving intact its annual snowfall record at nearly 2.74m, NWS meteorologist Bob Oravec said.
Five centimtres would break the city's record, which was set in 1995-96.
