About 350,000 homes and businesses lost power across the U.S. on Thursday as freezing rain and snow weighed down tree limbs and encrusted power lines, part of a winter storm that caused a deadly tornado in Alabama, dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Midwest and brought rare measurable snowfall and hundreds of power outages to parts of Texas.
More than 5,000 flights had been canceled — the worst day for cancellations since April 2020, at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, while hundreds more were delayed by early afternoon, according to FlightAware, a tracking website.
Dallas was hit particularly hard, with 65 percent of outgoing flights at its largest airport grounded until a runway could be reopened around lunchtime, reports the New York Times. Cancellations and delays on Thursday affected more than 10 percent of all air traffic in the U.S.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a Disaster Declaration for 17 counties Thursday evening, saying, “This ice storm poses an imminent threat of severe property damage, injury, or loss of life,” as temperatures plunged into the low 20s across a large portion of the state and various forms of frozen precipitation accumulated.
One thing is for sure – This winter storm is a hard test for Texas’ power grid after the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) declared most of its electric generation units and transmission facilities fully winterized.
The coating of ice dug as deep as San Antonio, Texas, where accumulating ice could be seen bending fences at a Top Golf facility in the area.
The highest totals of power outages blamed on icy or downed power lines were concentrated in Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, and Ohio, but the path of the storm stretched further from the central U.S. into the South and Northeast on Thursday.
The Northeast is not out of the woods yet, with heavy snow expected from the southern Rockies to northern New England, with heavy ice buildup likely from Pennsylvania to New England through Friday, according to the Associated Press.
The icy conditions had already proven to be deadly on Wednesday after the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) in New Mexico reported a fatality in a rollover crash on a mountainous road just outside of Albuquerque.
Throughout the day, the BCSO reported at least 24 vehicle crashes, 13 of which there were reported injuries, plus four rolled vehicles.
Officials in rural southeast Kansas reported several accidents on roads and highways slicked with snow and black ice. In Arkansas, the Weather Service said conditions could cause power outages and make travel “very hazardous or impossible.”
Farther east, parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky were under an ice storm warning. Memphis, Tennessee saw continuous freezing rain on Thursday, leading to traffic accidents, downed trees, and power outages.
“The unusual part is the amount,” Tom Salem, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said of the freezing rain. “Usually the storms move, but this storm is sort of sitting over us.”
In western Alabama, Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told WBRC-TV a tornado that hit a rural area Thursday afternoon killed one person, a female he found under the rubble, and critically injured three others. A home was heavily damaged, he said.
The disruptive storm began Tuesday and moved across the central U.S. on Wednesday’s Groundhog Day, the same day the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. The storm came on the heels of a nor’easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast.