ATLANTA — The fountains turned into crystal still-lifes in Savannah, Ga. Ducks walked forlornly on iced-over swimming holes in southern Arkansas. School bus doors froze open in Beaufort, S.C. And pipes froze all over as Southerners, who are not born or made for temperatures in the Minnesota digits, had to consider things they typically take for granted.

“You’ve got to be careful when you move a mandolin outside into the freezing air, because it’s a shock and can crack the wood,” said Mike Slusser, known as Mandolin Mike, standing on a frigid Nashville sidewalk and playing Bill Monroe and Jimmie Rodgers tunes for an audience consisting largely of a barely disturbed tip box. “This is the coldest I’ve ever played in.”

In Lexington, Ky., a clerk at the Sunset Motel called the local police on Monday afternoon to report that a guest was seeking assistance. The guest, as it happened, had recently escaped from state prison, but apparently was not expecting it to be like this on the outside.

“He was in bad shape,” said Sherelle Roberts, a public information officer for the Lexington Division of Police, who added that the man was treated and handed over to the state police. “It is unusually cold. You don’t have to have a meteorology degree to be able to speak to that.”