By David Alexander
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Severe weather battered much of the country on Sunday,
with snow and gusting winds driving chill factors below zero in
parts of the northern Midwest and heavy rains provoking flash
flood warnings in the Northeast.
In the southern
part of the country, workers cleaned up after tornadoes that left
at least 12 dead in Alabama and ice storms that knocked out power
to hundreds of thousands of households in Texas, Arkansas and
Louisiana.
The National
Weather Service (news - web sites) said wind chill factors in
several areas of the northern Midwest were 20 to 35 degrees below
zero and warned residents to dress well if venturing outdoors
because exposed flesh could freeze in minutes.''
Lower-than-expected
snowfall overnight allowed air and road traffic in the Chicago
area to return to near normal, with flights in and out of O'Hare
International Airport experiencing only minor delays, officials
said.
A spokeswoman
for United Airlines, which canceled 50 percent of its departures
from O'Hare on Saturday because of forecasts for Chicago's third
major snowstorm in a week, said it was operating well on Sunday.
``We have
canceled 14 flights system-wide out of our daily schedule of 2,300
flights due to weather,'' she said. ``We are experiencing some
weather on the East Coast ... but we are not experiencing significant
weather cancellations today.'' The New York region was buffeted
by heavy rains and high winds with gusts of up to 50 mph. Flash
flood warnings were in effect for much of the area's suburbs,
including northern New Jersey.
Downed trees and driving rains snarled traffic. A severe thunderstorm
and high wind warning was in effect until the evening hours for
the entire region.
The three
New York-area airports said arriving and departing flights were
reporting delays from 30 minutes to two hours, with many cancellations.
High winds
and blowing snow made road travel treacherous from eastern Michigan
to central Ohio.
In Minnesota
and North Dakota, wind chills were reported at between minus 15
and minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 26 and minus 34 degrees
Celsius) on Sunday morning. The temperature in Chicago was about
12 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 11 Celsius), similar to those in
Kentucky and Tennessee.
Brian Gonsalves,
a meteorologist for Weather Services Corp., said for the next
few days the region would continue to experience temperatures
``10 to 18 degrees (6 to 10 degrees Celsius) below what you would
normally see at this time of year.''
Snow continued
to fall in parts of the northern Midwest and Northwest. In Wyoming,
two people have been killed in avalanches in the Teton Pass area
in the past two weeks.
Tornadoes,
Power Outages In South
The U.S. South
was trying to recover from devastating tornadoes and ice storms
earlier in the week.
Emergency
crews in Alabama picked their way through mangled houses and uprooted
power lines on Sunday in a search for survivors of tornadoes that
swept through the state, killing at least 12 people and injuring
dozens of others.
The relief
effort was most intense just south of the Alabama city of Tuscaloosa,
where national guard troops sealed off a sprawling mobile home
trailer park that was flattened by a powerful tornado Saturday
afternoon.
Alabama Gov.
Don Siegleman, visibly shaken as he toured the Tuscaloosa disaster
site by helicopter, said: ``Volunteers are providing food, shelter
and clothing. Clean-up crews are at work, but it will probably
be a long time before the effects of this tornado are mended.''
In East Texas
and northwest Louisiana, at least 36,500 homes remained without
power on Sunday amid freezing nighttime cold after the area's
worst ice storm in years tore down power lines last Wednesday.
More than 1,400 utility workers labored feverishly to clear fallen
pine trees and replace snapped power poles along hundreds of miles
of lines in a job that will not be completed until Tuesday, said
Scott McCloud, spokesman for Columbus, Ohio-based AEP-Southwestern
Electric Power.
McCloud said
21,000 customers in the Shreveport, Louisiana, area and 15,500
in East Texas, mainly around Longview and Marshall still had no
electricity. That was down from a total of 235,000 outages at
the peak of the storm on Wednesday. Many others served by small
local power cooperatives were also waiting for power to be restored,
he said.
``This is
the worst winter storm damage we've ever had. There is none to
compare,'' McCloud said, adding the last bad ice storm in February
1994 knocked out power to 100,000 customers in the area
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