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Already, New Year’s Eve events planned for Ottawa and Toronto have been curtailed because of the cold.

Ottawa 2017 organizers have moved New Year’s Eve events into city hall. The only outside event will be the torch lighting set for 8:17 p.m. Sunday.

Photo by Aaron Lynett / THE CANADIAN PRESS

In a news release Friday, the Department of Canadian Heritage said it had cancelled New Year’s Eve performances by musical acts and DJs because of Environment Canada’s extreme cold warning and “public health and safety concerns.” It said skating and pyrotechnics would proceed on Parliament Hill as planned.

But officials are warning people to bundle up if they do decide to be brave and venture outdoors.

Meanwhile, we can take solace in the knowledge that a huge swath of the United States is also mired in the same deep freeze. The cold front stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the eastern seaboard and as far south as Oklahoma.

The freezing temperatures in the U.S. are being blamed on a number of deaths on the road and people exposed to the cold.

• Icy road conditions in central Michigan triggered more than 30 crashes Friday, including a pileup involving 40 cars.

• South Carolina endured a rare bout of freezing rain that shut bridges that needed to be de-iced.

• Two thresher sharks washed up near Cape Cod, Mass., frozen to death.

• In South Dakota, an 83-year-old woman died from exposure when her car crashed. Earlier, three others froze to death near Lake Erie when their car slid off the road.

• Across the Great Lakes, in Erie, Pa., help lines have “been ringing off the hook” after the city — two hours west of Buffalo — was plastered by a massive 165-cm dump of snow.

“This is a crippling snow event,” Zach Sefcovic, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told Reuters. “They are no strangers to snow in that part of the state, but this much snow in that short a time is just unprecedented.”

— With files from Ottawa staff

bhunter@postmedia.com

Photo by Aaron Lynett / THE CANADIAN PRESS