Winter Storm Causes Widespread Power Outages and Icy Roads

Hundreds of thousands of power outages were reported across the U.S. as a monster storm hit huge sections of the country, snarling roadways with dangerous ice and forcing mass flight cancellations.

More than 800,000 customers were without power due to the storm early Monday, according to PowerOutage.us, which collects real-time data from utilities across the country.

Many outages were reported across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. This map shows data on outages from FindEnergy, by county:

At one point, widespread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain threatened nearly 180 million people — more than half the U.S. population — in a path stretching from the southern Rocky Mountains to New England, the National Weather Service said. It warned people to brace for a string of frigid days.

“The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts,” said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan said the storm “will linger in the New England region through Monday morning before finally exiting the U.S. later in the day,” followed by “frigid cold temperatures well below average for this time of year.”

President Trump approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned supplies, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.

“We just ask that everyone would be smart — stay home if possible,” Noem said.

The Midwest saw windchills as low as minus 40 Fahrenheit, meaning that frostbite could set in within minutes. The minus 36 Fahrenheit reading in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning was the coldest in almost 30 years.

Storm hits the South

In Shelby County, Texas, near the Louisiana border, ice weighed down on pine trees and caused branches to snap, downing power lines. About a third of the county’s 16,000 electric customers lost power on Saturday.

“We have hundreds of trees down and a lot of limbs in the road,” Shelby County Commissioner Stevie Smith said from his pickup truck. “I’ve got my crew out clearing roads as fast as we can. It’s a lot to deal with right now.”

At least two people died in the Lone Star State: one in Austin and another, a 16-year-old girl, was killed in a sledding accident in Frisco, according to local authorities.

An elderly man in Colleyville, Texas, northeast of Fort Worth, was hospitalized after being found in a pond in freezing conditions on Sunday morning, CBS Texas reported.

As of Sunday night, two deaths were reported in Louisiana that resulted from the winter weather, three in Tennessee and one in Kansas, where a missing woman found dead in the snow in Emporia, authorities said.

A man froze to death at a New York City playground, New York State Senator Jessica Ramos said on social media.

There were reports of vehicles hitting fallen trees and trees falling onto houses in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, where more than half of all electric customers lost power.

“We got limbs that are dragging the ground,” said Mark Pierce, a spokesperson for the local sheriff’s office. “These trees are just completely saturated with ice.”

In Louisville, Kentucky, emergency services on Saturday handled more than 850 calls regarding collisions, stranded motorists and other emergencies related to exposure to cold, officials said, noting that the actual number could be even higher.

Virginia State Police said early Sunday that the agency had thus far responded to 177 crashes since the storm began, with 14 of those incidents involving injuries.

Officials in Georgia advised people in the state’s northern regions to get off the roads Saturday and be prepared to stay put for at least 48 hours.

In Rabun County, one of the hardest hit parts of Georgia, officials say they’ve had fallen trees and downed power lines, along with icy and hazardous roadways around the county. Even when the storm moves out of the area, officials are warning residents not to get on the roads, as below-freezing temperatures will cause ice to reform, making travel dangerous, CBS Atlanta reported.

After earlier putting 500 National Guard members on standby, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Saturday that he was deploying 120 of them to northeast Georgia “to further strengthen our response in the hardest hit areas.”

“We’re about halfway through this event. I know that some people may be waking up and saying ‘There’s nothing out there,’ because we are in a little bit of a lull,” Kemp said Sunday. “There’s more coming. We do think things will deteriorate as the day goes on.”

Churches moved Sunday services online, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, decided to hold its Saturday night radio performance without fans. Mardi Gras parades in Louisiana were canceled or rescheduled.

Jami Joe of Nashville, 41, feared her electricity might not last as ice-heavy limbs from oak and pecan trees continued to crash around her house. “It’s only a matter of time if a limb strikes a power line,” she said.

Nashville Electric Service said Sunday afternoon there were nearly 200,000 customers there without power and warned the outages could last days or longer.

School closings were already announced for Monday in numerous cities, including Dallas, Houston and Memphis.

Some universities in the South canceled classes for Monday, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Mississippi’s main campus in Oxford.

Oxford Utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours. At least 180,000 customers across the state of Mississippi do not have power, Gov. Tate Reeves said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

“Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”

Oxford city officials posted dramatic photos on social media of slick roads and ice-coated trees sagging or breaking under the added weight.

“We haven’t seen a storm of this magnitude, in terms of ice, since 1994,” Reeves said, but he said he doesn’t anticipate the need to call in the National Guard at this time.

After the storm in 1994, some locals remembered being without power for weeks. During the press conference on Sunday, the governor was asked how long it would take for power to be restored, especially in harder hit areas, but said he didn’t want to “begin to try to forecast or estimate when some of the power can or cannot be put back on.”

“As you mentioned … in some of the northernmost counties, the roads are such that they haven’t really been able to get out and get a real assessment,” Reeves said. “So, at this time, trying to put a time frame on it would just be pure speculation on my part, and I think most of the utility companies would say the same.”

Reeves said he is requesting help from FEMA to send cots and food to warming shelters, as well as generators to long-term care facilities and hospitals that don’t have adequate backup generators.

On the highways, crews clearing downed trees are feeling overwhelmed.

“We’re spread thin on equipment here, because there’s so many guys in different directions and we’re out here having to mainly do this where usually we would need a backhoe or bulldozer, something to help move this stuff,” said John Sanford, a road worker with the Mississippi Department of Transportation. “One of the guys that worked with us, he couldn’t make it back this morning. He’s got two trees on his house.”

Asked what the biggest challenges were with clearing the roads, Sanford replied, “No sleep, the cold, the rain, you know, just getting exhausted… You just get physically tired and you know, there’s more and more trees falling, people needing help. The minute you get one cleaned up, another one falls.”

In New Albany, Mississippi, resident Eddie Swords said the constant cracking limbs and falling trees “sound like a firecracker popping.”

He added, “The first one fell last night, I thought, ‘Who’s shooting firecrackers this time of night?’ They go ‘pop, pop.'”

Swords said the power was out at his house, but he has a generator at his home, “thank goodness.” One of his friends — who he said helped him chainsaw a path in and out of his neighborhood so they could get fuel — will be staying over to keep warm.

“I told anybody who wants to come down, ‘I got natural gas that’s good and toasted in there right now,'” Swords said.

Warnings for the Northeast

After sweeping through the South, the storm began dumping snow on the Northeast. New York City got almost a foot, CBS News New York reported, and Boston more than 20 inches, according to CBS News Boston.

Forecasters say the damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane. Weather forecasters also said the winter storm was unusual.

“I think there are two parts of this storm that make it unique. One is just a broad expanse of spatial coverage of this event … You’ve got 2,000 miles of country that’s being impacted by the storm with snow, sleet, and freezing rain,” said Josh Weiss, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. “The other part of this storm that’s really impressive is what’s going to happen right afterward. We’re looking at extreme cold, record cold.”