Massive winter storm across the US brings ice, frigid temperatures and widespread power outages
A massive winter storm continued Sunday morning, dumping sleet, freezing rain and snow across the South and up through New England, bringing frigid temperatures, widespread power outages and treacherous road conditions.
The ice and snowfall were expected to continue through Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, causing 鈥渄angerous travel and infrastructure impacts鈥� to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said.
Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while 鈥渃atastrophic ice accumulation鈥� threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
鈥淚t is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,鈥� weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. 鈥淚t was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we鈥檙e talking like a 2,000 mile spread.鈥�
As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, she said. The number of customers without power was approaching 800,000, according to poweroutage.us, and the number was rising.
Tennessee was hardest hit with more than a quarter of a million customers out, and Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi all had more than 100,000 customers in the dark.
More than 10,000 flights had already been canceled Sunday and another 8,000 have been delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. The biggest hubs hit so far were in Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, New York and New Jersey.
Even once the ice and snow stop falling, the danger will continue, Santorelli warned.
鈥淏ehind the storm it鈥檚 just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,鈥� she said. That means the ice and snow won鈥檛 melt as fast, which could hinder some efforts to restore power and other infrastructure.
President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
Nashville and the surrounding area was seeing ice accumulations of half an inch or more, with icicles hanging from power lines and overburdened tree limbs crashing to the ground.
鈥淲e typically say that once you start seeing, you know, roughly a half an inch of ice, that鈥檚 when you鈥檙e going to start seeing the more widespread power outages,鈥� Santorelli said.
In Oxford, Mississippi, police on Sunday morning used social media to tell residents to stay home as the danger of being outside was too great. Local utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.
鈥淒ue to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,鈥� the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday.
鈥淭he situation is currently too dangerous to continue,鈥� it said. 鈥淭rees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks. We simply cannot clear the lines faster than the limbs are falling.鈥�
Icy roads also made travel dangerous in north Georgia.
鈥淵ou know it鈥檚 bad when Waffle House is closed!!!鈥� the Cherokee County Sheriff鈥檚 office posted on Facebook with a photo of a shuttered restaurant. Whether the chain鈥檚 restaurants are open 鈥� known as the Waffle House Index 鈥� has become an informal way to gauge the severity of weather disasters across the South.
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Brumback reported from Atlanta. Walker reported from New York.