OKLAHOMA CITY – A powerful winter
storm system pounded the nation’s midsection Wednesday and headed toward
the Northeast, where people braced for the high winds and heavy snow
that disrupted holiday travel, knocked out power to thousands of homes
and were blamed in at least six deaths.
Hundreds
of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on
icy roads or slid off into drifts, and blizzard warnings were issued
across Indiana and Ohio amid snowy gusts of 30 mph that blanketed roads
and windshields, at times causing whiteout conditions.
“The
way I’ve been describing it is as a low-end blizzard, but that’s sort
of like saying a small Tyrannosaurus rex,” said John Kwiatkowski, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis. He said
the storm’s winds were just high enough to classify the storm as a
blizzard, making it one of the strongest snowstorms in years to strike
central and southern Indiana.
“It’s ugly out,”
said Elizabeth Brinker, 26, in downtown Indianapolis as she hurried to
her car after the law firm where she works sent employees home Wednesday
morning.
Some 40 vehicles got bogged down
trying to make it up a slick hill in central Indiana, and four state
snowplows slid off slick roads near Vincennes as snow fell at the rate
of 3 inches within an hour in some spots.
Two
passengers in a car on a sleet-slickened Arkansas highway were killed
Wednesday in a head-on collision, and two people, including a
76-year-old Milwaukee woman, were killed Tuesday on Oklahoma highways.
Deaths from wind-toppled trees were reported in Texas and Louisiana. The
system that spawned nearly three dozen tornadoes across Gulf Coast
states on Tuesday was headed to New England and the Eastern Seaboard.
National Guardsmen were called out to help cope with the storm in Indiana and Arkansas.
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In
Arkansas, Humvees transported medical workers and patients in areas
with 10 inches of snow. Gov. Mike Beebe sent out National Guard teams
after the storm left 192,000 customers without power Wednesday morning.
The largest utility, Entergy Arkansas, said some people could be without
power for as long as a week because of snapped poles and wires after
ice coated power lines ahead of 10 inches of snowfall.
Other states to the east also had widely scattered outages and treacherous roads.
Traffic crawled at 25 mph on Interstate 81 in Maryland, where authorities reported scores of accidents.
“We’re
going to go down south and get below it (the storm),” said a determined
Richard Power, traveling from home in Levittown, N.Y., to Louisville,
Ky., in a minivan with his wife, two children and their beagle, Lucky.
He said they were well on their way until they hit snow near Harrisburg,
Pa., then 15 mph traffic on Interstate 81 at Hagerstown, Md. “We’re
going to go as far as we can go. …. If it doesn’t get better, we’re
going to just get a hotel.”
About two dozen
counties in Indiana and Ohio issued snow emergency travel alerts, urging
people to go out on the roads only if necessary.
“People
need not to travel,” said Rachel Trevino, a meteorologist at the
National Weather Service bureau in Paducah, Ky. “They need to just go
where they’re going to be there and stay there.”
Jennifer Miller, 58, was taking a bus Wednesday from Cincinnati to visit family in Columbus.
“I
wish this had come yesterday and was gone today,” she said, struggling
with a rolling suitcase and three smaller bags on a slushy sidewalk near
the station. “I’m glad I don’t have to drive in this.”
More than 900 flights were canceled by midday, according to FlightAware.com.
Snow
was blamed for scores of vehicle accidents as far east as Maryland. As
the storm moved east, New England state highway departments were
treating roads and getting ready to mobilize with snowfall forecasts of a
foot or more.
“People are picking up salt and
a lot of shovels today,” said Andy Greenwood, an assistant manager at
Aubuchon Hardware in Keene, N.H.
In
Manchester, N.H., public works officials said plow trucks were ready, as
were a variety of emergency notification systems including blinking
strobe lights at major intersections, and email, text and social media
alerts.
Early indications were that
day-after-Christmas mall traffic was down, too, with people holding off
in the storm-affected areas on returning that ugly sweater or other
unwanted gifts.
“I can’t feel my feet, and the
ice is hurting when it hits my face,” said Tracy Flint, a Columbus,
Ohio, hairstylist who was trudging to work across a shopping center lot
where only a handful of cars were parked. “But it could be worse.”
Behind
the storm, Mississippi’s governor declared states of emergency in eight
counties with more than 25 people reported injured and 70 homes left
damaged.
Cindy Williams, 56, stood near a home
in McNeill, Miss., where the front was collapsed into a pile of wood
and brick, with a balcony and porch ripped apart. Large Oak trees were
uprooted and winds sheared off nearby treetops in a nearby grove. But
she was focused on that all the family members from her husband to their
grandchildren had escaped harm.
“We are so thankful,” she said. “God took care of us.”
Associated
Press writers Rick Callahan and Charles Wilson in Indianapolis, Kelly
P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark.; Jim Van Anglen in Mobile, Ala.; Holbrook
Mohr in Jackson, Miss.; Julie Carr Smyth and Mitch Stacy in Columbus,
Ohio; Amanda Lee Myers in Cincinnati, David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md.,
and Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report
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