LITCHFIELD, Maine — The ice that snapped utility poles and knocked out power to more than half a million people in the United States and Canada was stubbornly hanging on Wednesday as frigid temperatures cloaked a region from the Great Lakes to New England.
Ashley Walter was still hunkered down with her husband, Jacob, and their month-old daughter, Leah, at a shelter set up in a school in Litchfield, Maine, where the temperature dropped to 4 degrees overnight and wasn’t expected to get much higher than 15 on Wednesday.
The family lost power Saturday, got it back temporarily, then lost it again Sunday and has been without since. Ashley, 27, and Leah stay warm at the shelter, while Jacob makes frequent trips home to check on their cats and water pipes.
Despite the challenge of being forced out of the house, especially at Christmas, the family is staying positive. Ashley made sure they celebrated the holiday.
‘‘It’s definitely kind of strange but we’re hanging in there,’’ she said Wednesday. ‘‘We did our Christmas together last night. I packed little stockings and gave them to my husband, sisters, and my daughter.’’
Trudy Lamoreau was supervising the emergency shelter where about 25 people stayed Tuesday night.
Lamoreau, who’s also the town manager, said they warmed the shelter with generators until the school got power back late Tuesday night. Maine still had about 39,000 people without power, down from a high of 106,000.
‘‘People are doing quite well, considering the circumstances,’’ she said.
Volunteers have tried to make the shelter homey. For Christmas Day, they cooked a ham dinner with potatoes, vegetables, bread, and pie for dessert.
‘‘They have been amazing,’’ Walter said, adding that the volunteers set up a separate room for her and Leah so they wouldn’t disturb others when the infant woke during the night. ‘‘They just try to make everything better for us.’’
About 2,000 people remained without power in Vermont on Wednesday — about half the number of people who were without electricity on Tuesday.
Temperatures were in the single digits in several places, and highs were anticipated to struggle to get past 10 degrees.
Green Mountain Power says it got power back to all its customers Tuesday, but warned heavy ice on trees could cause more outages.
The Red Cross closed three of four shelters on Wednesday in the state as use declined.