Northeast U.S. residents had been urged to remain off the roads with temperatures starting to drop Friday night as a significant winter storm turned already slippery roads and sidewalks into ice-covered hazards.
The storm unfold distress from the Deep South, the place tree limbs snapped and a twister claimed a life, to the nation's northeastern tip the place snow and ice made journey treacherous Friday.
Massachusetts State Police responded to greater than 200 crashes with property harm or accidents, together with one deadly crash, beginning Thursday night, officers stated. New Hampshire State Police reported a minimum of 70 crashes Friday morning.
"This quantity is most undoubtedly low as a result of experiences are nonetheless being written and entered," state police in Massachusetts tweeted.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned residents because the snow blows out to sea late Friday and Saturday to remain house if potential to keep away from ice-coated roadways and the specter of falling tree limbs within the Hudson Valley and Capital areas.
"We're not out of the hazard zone but," Hochul stated. "The climate is wildly unpredictable."
Greater than a foot (30 centimetres) of snow fell in components of Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Utility crews had been making progress in an space stretching from Texas to Ohio after about 350,000 houses and companies had been in the dead of night at one level.
One of many hardest-hit locations was Memphis, the place greater than 100,000 clients remained with out energy Friday night time in Shelby County alone, based on poweroutage.us, which tracks utility experiences.
Memphis resident Michael LaRosa described cracking and banging because the tree limbs fell, and the uninteresting hum and pop of transformers blowing out in his tree-lined Midtown neighborhood. A fireplace began on the finish of his avenue, attributable to a dwell wire on Thursday.
"It was fairly surreal for a short time," LaRosa, a professor at Rhodes Faculty and a guide editor, stated Friday. "There have been folks strolling within the streets, and I used to be fearful that limbs had been going to fall on them. The neighbourhood form of collapsed fairly rapidly and fairly spectacularly."
Crews labored to take away bushes and downed energy traces from metropolis streets, whereas those that misplaced electrical energy spent a chilly night time at house, or sought refuge at lodges or houses of family and friends. Utility officers stated it might take days for energy to be restored.
It is also going to take days to clear 225 downed bushes on metropolis streets, and crews had been working 16-hour shifts to get it completed, Robert Knecht, Memphis' public works director, stated Thursday night time.
In Oklahoma, police within the Tulsa suburb of Damaged Arrow stated they had been investigating a hit-and-run crash that killed a 12-year-old boy who was struck whereas sledding.
Tragedy additionally struck western Alabama, the place a twister on Thursday killed one particular person and critically injured three others, Hale County Emergency Administration Director Russell Weeden informed native information retailers.
The storm represented a "extremely energized system" with waves of low strain driving alongside like a prepare from Texas, the place there was snowfall and subfreezing temperatures, to Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, stated Hunter Tubbs, meteorologist from the Nationwide Climate Service in Maine.
Airways scrubbed about 3,400 flights by noon Friday, with the best numbers of cancellations at Dallas-Fort Value and airports within the New York Metropolis space and Boston, based on monitoring service FlightAware.
Slippery roads induced scores of automobiles to slip off roads, even earlier than anticipated deteriorating circumstances through the night rush hour.
In Tennessee, a person was killed when his truck crashed right into a tree that had fallen on a freeway, inflicting the automobile to spin right into a ditch Thursday night time in Haywood County, the freeway patrol stated.
Within the Pittsburgh space, commuter rail service was halted when an influence line went down, trapping automobiles at a Port Authority of Allegheny County rail yard.
In New York's Hudson Valley, the Catskill Animal Sanctuary was counting on mills for energy Friday after the in a single day ice storm.
"We had bushes down all around the property and bushes down on our highway," stated Kathy Stevens, founding father of the refuge for rescued cattle.
However the roughly 250 animals in Saugerties had been OK, she stated. Massive animals took shelter in barns and smaller animals had been taken to workplaces, the infirmary and different locations to maintain protected from falling bushes.
In Texas, the return of subfreezing climate introduced heightened anxiousness almost a 12 months after February 2021's catastrophic freeze that buckled the state's energy grid for days, resulting in tons of of deaths in one of many worst blackouts in U.S. historical past.
However Gov. Greg Abbott stated Thursday's energy outages had been as a consequence of excessive winds or downed energy traces, not grid failures. About 13,000 houses and companies in Texas remained with out energy Friday afternoon.
In New England, some locations welcomed the winter climate, which was a boon for skiers and snowmobilers.
In Vermont, nobody was complaining on the Stowe Mountain Resort the place skiers and snowboarders reported a few of the greatest circumstances of the season, with greater than 10 inches (25 centimetres) of snow in a single day, and snow persevering with to fall.
"We're simply having a blast, the sauce is flowing," stated Jared Marshall, of Denmark, Maine, a member of the ski group of New Hampshire's Colby Sawyer Faculty on the town for a ski meet.
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Sharp reported from Portland, Maine; Foody reported from Chicago; and Bleed reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Related Press writers Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Wilson Ring in Stowe, Vermont; Marina Villeneuve and Michael Hill in Albany, New York; Ken Miller in Oklahoma Metropolis; Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas; David Koenig, Jake Bleiberg and Terry Wallace in Dallas; Paul Davenport in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland; Rick Callahan in Indianapolis and Jay Reeves in Alabaster, Alabama, contributed to this report.
The solar rises over Tulsa, Okla., Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. (Mike Simons/Tulsa World by way of AP)
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