 Ice
coated trees and roads in the southern Plains. Driving treacherous;
tens of thousands lose power
(CNN) -- A
fierce winter storm that has already glazed the U.S. heartland
threatens to bring ice, freezing rain and snow to the mid-Atlantic
states by the weekend, forecasters say.
The storm
caused winter storm warnings to be issued Tuesday for portions
of Missouri and Tennessee, while weather statements are in place
for Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia.
A winter storm
warning is possible on Friday in Virginia, a weather service forecast
said Tuesday, with "the potential for heavy snow."
"Right
now, even though this is preliminary, it will perhaps impact the
mid-Atlantic region, and eventually it could be for New England
and the Canadian Maritimes," said CNN weather anchor Karen
Maginnis. "We won't know the exact track until we get all
the weather elements together."
The slow-moving
storm prompted travel warnings across the south central U.S. on
Tuesday, toppling trees and power lines and leaving hundreds of
thousand without power.
'A sheet of
ice out there'
In Arkansas, highways resembled skating rinks as up to 2 inches
of ice covered parts of the state. The Little Rock National Airport
was closed, with all runways covered in ice. The National Weather
Service implored people to avoid driving if possible, and to have
winter weather survival kits in their cars if they had to venture
out.
An ice storm
warning remained in effect for parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Freezing temperatures created a blanket of ice on highways and
secondary roads, making driving extremely dangerous.
"This
system is very slow-moving, so the ice accumulation is remarkably
heavy," Maginnis said. "When we look at ice storms,
we may talk about quarter-of-an-inch or half-inch accumulation.
But to talk about 1, 2 and 3 inches of accumulations is catastrophic,"
she said.
Arkansas National
Guardsmen were sent out to rescue motorists stranded on slippery
highways during the second huge ice storm to hit the state in
two weeks.
"The
southwest corner is just bloodied," said Jennifer Gordon,
a spokeswoman for the state Emergency Management Department. "Roads
are like skating rinks. It's just catastrophic."
Four traffic
deaths were blamed on the storm in New Mexico, while Oklahoma
recorded three deaths.
Several communities
opened shelters across southern Arkansas after more than 100,000
homes and businesses lost electricity because of ice-heavy limbs
falling on power lines.
"Going
to sleep last night you could hear trees popping all over the
woods," said Billy Ray McKelvey, managing editor of the De
Queen Daily Citizen newspaper, which was unable to publish a Tuesday
issue.
Across Arkansas,
stranded and abandoned vehicles hampered efforts to clear roads.
Texas authorities
closed some highways. "We can't salt the roads fast enough,"
said Garza County, Texas, deputy constable Cliff Laws.
More power
outages
In Oklahoma, ice on trees and power lines knocked out power to
tens of thousands of people on Tuesday. Emergency crews in the
state had restored electricity to several thousand people by midmorning,
but about 20,000 customers were still in the dark.
Ice on power
lines in McAlester, Oklahoma, was almost an inch thick. City manager
Randy Green said power was out to the city's water system and
the town got dangerously low on water.
Entergy Arkansas
reported about 49,000 customers without power across the state.
More than 40,000 customers had no power in northeastern Texas,
and 34,000 were without power in Louisiana.
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