BOSTON — For the second year in a row Valentine’s Day weekend has meant serious weather issues.
Last year it was all of the snow and ice dams, this year it’s temperatures at their lowest point in almost sixty years.
Sunday morning temperatures dipped as low as 16 degrees below zero in Worcester with a wind chill of 44 below. Boston wasn’t far behind with a low of minus nine degrees and a wind chill reaching 36 below.
Those cold temperatures caused pipes to freeze across the state, and a warm up could mean even more damage.
“It's not leaking when it's frozen so when it thaws out, that's when it happens,” Mack Barrero, a plumber said.
One Dorchester resident found out about this the hard way when frozen pipes in her basement burst, causing the ceiling to collapse.
“The water was just coming down on the wall right on my stereo set, on my karaoke, and right on all the pictures,” Debbie Cox said.
Cox said it took 24 hours to get a plumber to visit her house.
Some plumbers, including Barrero who eventually responded to Cox’s house, said they had responded to dozens of calls.
"It’s going to be 50, 55 by 2 p.m. tomorrow. I can guarantee, you can call any plumber. And you can put this on the news, water's going to be shooting out everywhere,” local plumber John Romero said.
Romero said a leak of 7.5 gallons a minute isn't unheard of from a broken pipe, that would mean 75 gallons flooding into a room in 10 minutes.