A man clears a tree from an icy road in Little Rock, Arkansas
Southern Plains
gets a break, but storm could slam Northeast.
Winter storm
warnings were in effect across a wide swath of the United States
early Thursday, from Montana down to Texas and across to Maryland
and West Virginia.
In Montana,
winds gusting up to 65 mph overnight and two to four inches of
new snow combined with icy roads to make travel extremely hazardous,
according to the National Weather Service.
Roads were
also slippery in southeast Oklahoma, southwest Arkansas, northwest
Louisiana and northeast Texas thanks to a mix of freezing rain,
sleet and snow.
In western
Maryland and eastern West Virginia, travelers were advised to
watch out for slippery roads and blowing snow until Thursday afternoon.
On Wednesday,
more than half a million homes and businesses were without power
as the slow-moving ice storm moved across the south central United
States.
In the Texas
Panhandle, thousands of travelers were stranded and government
offices and businesses were forced to close because of the dangerous
mix of heavy snow and icy roads .
Many people
lost telephone or water service as the storm brought down telephone
lines, and power outages disabled municipal water pumps.
At one point
on Wednesday, an estimated 590,000 homes and businesses were without
power from New Mexico to Arkansas. By late Wednesday, Arkansas
authorities reported that power had been restored to 40,000 customers.
Entergy Arkansas said it had 4,000 workers on the job, but it
might be January 5 before power is restored to everyone.
14 deaths
reported
Fourteen deaths have been blamed on the weather since Monday;
four in New Mexico, nine in Texas and one in Missouri. In that
state, a 13-year-old girl was killed in Arnold after the pickup
truck she was riding in went over the side of a bridge and plunged
50 feet into a river.
In Little
Rock, Arkansas, Dave Kaffenberger closed off a few rooms of his
house and gathered his family around the hearth after an ice storm
knocked out the electricity.
"We lit
a half-dozen candles and played Clue by candlelight," Kaffenberger
said in his darkened home Wednesday. "It's an extended Christmas.
That's the way I'm looking at it."
In New Mexico,
Interstate 40 reopened Wednesday; it had been closed because of
ice. But many roads in the southern part of the state remained
closed.
Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee ordered the state government closed Wednesday, but
later said state employees could return to work Thursday.
"We've
had what is, I guess, the equivalent of a nuclear-type situation
without radioactivity, because virtually everything is shut down,"
Huckabee told CNN via cell phone from the governor's mansion,
where power and phone service were out. "We have 10 or 12
counties where every single person in that county has lost power,
phone service, and water."
Huckabee said
much of the damage was in rural areas, some of them inaccessible
because downed trees were blocking many roads.
Power outages
put much of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the dark. Residents made
their way to public taps downtown for free hot water.
"I just
came down to get a jug to make formula for the baby," said
Fanessa Davenport, also filling juice bottles with water for an
86-year-old neighbor.
Kevin Byrd
said he had to use a chain saw to cut his way to the downtown
taps. "It looked like a tornado had been through," he
said. "The biggest thing about it is not having power. Then
you don't have your water pump."
Oklahoma declared
a disaster area
In Oklahoma, Gov. Frank Keating declared the entire state a disaster
area, and people without heat headed to shelters.
In the town
of Ada, about half the town's residents remained without drinking
water or power where falling tree limbs continued to cause problems,
Assistant Police Chief Rick Carson said Wednesday.
"Even
though there's not much wind, the limbs are just giving up and
going down through the power lines," he said.
Josh Marks clears snow Wednesday from a frozen pond at Rising
Park in Lancaster, Ohio
"Tell
everyone to stay out of Oklahoma. We have power outages throughout
the state; we have crashes everywhere," state trooper Brett
Wallace told Reuters.
In Texarkana,
which straddles the Texas-Arkansas line, officials ordered a nighttime
curfew and froze all prices to prevent some from capitalizing
on the city's troubles.
"Everywhere
you look, trees are snapped like match sticks. Power lines are
down everywhere and most of the streets are impassable because
we don't know which lines are live," said Texarkana resident
Nita Fran Hutcheson, who has had no water or electricity at her
home since Monday.
Storms on
the move
"At one point it looked as if this southern storm and a midwestern
storm would meet up along the Midatlantic coast and perhaps become
a nor'easter for the weekend," CNN Weather Anchor Karen Maginnis
said Wednesday night. "However, now it appears the southern
storm will eject into the Atlantic more quickly, so the midwestern
storm will be the center of attention."
That system
will move across the upper Midwest and into the Great Lakes region
on Thursday, bringing near blizzard conditions to the northern
plains.
The weather
also caused more air travel disruptions Wednesday.
A note on
American Airlines' Web site said some of its flights from Dallas-Fort
Worth International Airport were delayed. Delta Air Lines had
weather-related delays as well, according to its Web site.
Ice-encrusted
trees and fences in the Flint Hills south of Emporia, Kansas,
Wednesday
The Little Rock airport, closed since Monday, reopened Wednesday
afternoon. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth.
 Changing
weather pattern
"I came South to get away from this," said Renee Puskas,
a gas station manager in Hot Springs. "I told my kids I lived
in Ohio all my life and I've never seen anything like this."
While the
ice and snow may seem unusual for this part of the country, state
EMA spokeswoman Teri Pfeiffer said it's really the return of a
once-normal weather pattern.
"Arkansas
is in a transition zone, so what's happened in the past seven
or eight years, because of El Nino and La Nina, our winters have
been mild and we haven't had a lot of ice and snow," Pfeiffer
said. "In the past, we had ice and snow storms, and the weather
pattern is changing again.
"People
just weren't prepared this year, thinking that the winters were
getting milder."
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