BOSTON (AP) – Temperatures dropped well below zero Saturday across the Northeast, making it the coldest day in a decade for some cities and keeping all but the hardiest people indoors.

St. Johnsbury, Vt., led the list of records Saturday with a low of 27 below zero, the National Weather Service said. Unofficially, Saranac Lake, N.Y., reported 34 below.

At midday, temperatures in central Maine ranged through single digits above and below zero under blue and sunny skies.

Inside the relatively warm Kennebec Ice Arena in Hallowell, Ron Pelletier shrugged off the cold outside.

“This is nothing out of the ordinary for us. Come on,” said Pelletier, a high school teacher from Greenville who had driven two hours south for a pee wee hockey tryout his son was participating in.

“You get a few cold snaps during the winter. This is our first one,” he said.

Pelletier acknowledged that the deep freeze was the genuine article. Two days earlier, he noted, a ski meet had been canceled because of extreme cold.

The coldest morning readings were in northern Maine, according to the National Weather Service, with Allagash reporting 29 below.

Boston’s Logan International Airport recorded a low of 3 below zero, two degrees chillier than the previous record for Jan. 10, set in 1875. It was the city’s coldest day since Jan. 16, 1994, when thermometers registered 4 below.

As he stood on a street corner Saturday, Jim Konda said that since moving from Alabama 20 years ago, he has “learned about layers.”

Jeff Davis, 24, hurrying to work Saturday in downtown Boston, longed for San Diego. That city’s forecast high Saturday: 69 degrees.

Record numbers of motorists – about 1,000 an hour in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island- called the American Automobile Association of Southern New England to jump start their dead car batteries Saturday morning, said spokesman Art Kinsman.

Other record lows included 19 below zero at Montpelier, Vt.; 16 below at Syracuse, N.Y.; 7 below at Scranton, Pa.; and 2 below at Bridgeport, Conn., according to the National Weather Service.

“It’s cold – what people in New Hampshire told me I should call ‘crisp,”‘ Democrat presidential hopeful Wesley Clark joked Saturday morning in Milford, N.H., where the temperature was 6 below zero. “When we had weather that’s even somewhat similar to this down in Arkansas, we always took a holiday. We closed things down and went sledding.”

Atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, elevation 6,288 feet, the Web site for the Mount Washington Observatory reported a low of 29 below, an improvement from the reading of 38 below posted late Friday.

By comparison, Chicago was almost mild Saturday morning with a temperature of 19, up from Tuesday’s low of 5 below zero.

“For Chicago, it’s not too bad,” Chicago resident Kevin Hail said as he walked to the train station. “I’ve been here since 1986, and Lord, I’ve seen some cold weather.”

Rochester, N.Y., had its coldest morning since Jan. 16, 1994, with a record 12 below zero. New York City’s LaGuardia and Kennedy airports also set records for the day, but only at 2 degrees above zero.

The New England Patriots offered free coffee to fans arriving for Saturday’s playoff game in open-air Gillette Stadium in Foxboro against the Tennessee Titans, plus free handwarmers for the first 10,000 arrivals.

“One fan called me and said he wouldn’t be happy if the temperature wasn’t below five degrees,” Patriots spokesman Stacey James said. “He wanted to be part of the record.”