Kevin Chambers, weather.com
 Hartsfield
Int'l Airport backed up with post-holiday travelers
Closed airports,
canceled flights and treacherous roads frustrated holiday travelers
from New Mexico to Arkansas on Tuesday.
Flight schedules
were scrambled in Dallas, Little Rock and Memphis. In Oklahoma
City, Ok., an ice storm shut down the Will Rodgers World Airport,
and in Texas snow and freezing fog forced the Amarillo airport
to close.
The weather-related
problems had a ripple effect at airports elsewhere in the nation
on what was one of the busier travel days of the year.
Arkansas
National Guard
troops used humvee all-terrain vehicles to rescue stranded motorists
near Little Rock early Tuesday.
Traffic bogged
down after two tractor-trailers were unable to make it up an icy
hill on eastbound Interstate 40 in northern Pulaski County.
"We're
trying to put together teams to cover most of I-30 and most of
I-40," said Master Sgt. Kenny Bryant of the National Guard's
Camp Robinson in North Little Rock. "We're still trying to
get people out there."
"It's
real bad, it's very icy," said a state police dispatcher
at Hot Springs. "It's moving, but it's moving slowly. There
have been a lot of vehicles that have slid off the roadway."
Texas
In parts of
North and West Texas, snow was falling on top of ice-coated roads.
In Lubbock, police reported 67 traffic accidents early Christmas
night.
"Everything
is all iced up," said Garza County deputy constable Cliff
Laws. "We have about one-fourth to one-half of an inch of
ice under the snow. We can't salt the roads fast enough."
An 87-mile
stretch of U.S. Highway 84 from Lubbock to the Scurry County line
and all secondary roads in neighboring Crosby County also were
closed.
At Dallas-Fort
Worth International Airport, American Airlines canceled all incoming
and outgoing flights until 9:15 a.m. Tuesday.
A spokesperson
for American Airlines said that if its planes are kept in Dallas,
they won't get stranded elsewhere and upset the schedule even
further.
Southwest
Airlines, which operates out of Dallas Love Field, said it had
not canceled any flights.
In the Texarkana
area, in northeast Texas, more than 40,000 electric customers
lost power Christmas night when ice-covered tree limbs fell on
utility lines.
A wintry storm
two weeks ago knocked out electricity to about 250,000 people
in Arkansas and it took crews more than a week to restore power
to everyone.
New Mexico
Icy roads
in New Mexico were blamed for the deaths of four people in traffic
accidents.
Two people
were killed in a head-on collision on New Mexico Highway 104 near
Las Vegas, N.M. and two others died in separate accidents in southeastern
New Mexico.
Heavy snow
on Christmas Day forced authorities to shut down portions of Interstate
25 from Santa Fe to the Colorado state line.
Oklahoma
Highway travel
also is treacherous across most of Oklahoma with ice, snow, sleet
and freezing rain coating roadways.
A visitor
from New York, who was stranded at the closed Oklahoma City airport,
said "I don't feel like I'm in my own country at this point."
Thousands
of Oklahomans were without power for a second straight day, because
the heavy ice continues to snap power lines. The biggest outages
were around Ardmore, Muskogee, Mc Alester and near Fort Smith,
Ark.
Government
offices and some businesses remained closed Tuesday because of
the travel problems.
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