A sprawling winter storm that has forced schools to close, knocked out power and massively disrupted road and air travel will continue to hit the Central, Eastern and Southern U.S. over the next few days, forecasters warn. Winter storm and ice warnings were issued for over 110 million people from New Mexico to Canada.
Driving the news: Multiple governors have declared states of emergency, as heavy snow and freezing rain pummeled much of the country and as other parts of it experienced damaging ice accumulations.
What a Wednesday! ❄️❄️
— NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) February 3, 2022
Here is a preliminary look at observed snowfall totals. 📏
Sorted text listing: https://t.co/u61rlmAn9W
Interactive map: https://t.co/ke6HEqUqhk
Thank you to many of our followers, our trained spotters, and EM and media partners for reports. #ILwx #INwx pic.twitter.com/YdDyfsThC4
The big picture: Thursday was set to be one of the worst days for air travel this year. Over 6,000 flights scheduled for Thursday in the U.S. were canceled as of Thursday afternoon, per flight tracking site FlightAware. Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, one of the country's busiest hubs, had just one runway open shortly after noon. ...
- Power outages due to ice accumulating on trees and power lines were also escalating Thursday afternoon across several states, particularly Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky.
- Almost 40,000 customers in Texas were without power on Thursday at around 5 p.m. ET, as well as more than 140,000 in Tennessee, mainly in Memphis, over 22,000 in Arkansas, more 17,000 in Kentucky, according to tracking site poweroutage.us.