Winter weather cancels flights, leads to death in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Winter weather brought ice to a wide swath of the United States on Tuesday, causing the cancellation of more than 1,700 flights nationwide, bringing traffic to a standstill on an interstate through Arkansas and causing crashes that seriously injured two Texas law officers.

As the ice storm advanced eastward on Tuesday, watches and warnings stretched from the western heel of Texas all the way to West Virginia. Several rounds of mixed precipitation — including freezing rain and sleet — were in store for many areas through Wednesday, meaning some regions could be hit multiple times, the federal Weather Prediction Center warned.

Numerous auto collisions were reported Tuesday in Austin, Texas, with at least one fatality, according to the Austin Fire Department. In Travis County, Texas, which includes Austin, police and sheriff’s deputies responded to new crashes about every three minutes since 8 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Austin-Travis County Traffic Report Page.

More than 900 flights to or from major U.S. airport hub Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and more than 250 to or from Dallas Love Field were canceled or delayed Tuesday, according to the tracking service FlightAware. At Dallas-Fort Worth, more than 50% of Tuesday’s scheduled flights had been canceled by Tuesday afternoon.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines canceled more than 560 flights Tuesday and delayed more than 350 more, FlightAware reported.

About 7,000 power outages in Texas were reported as of late Tuesday morning, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said following a briefing in Austin on the worsening conditions. He emphasized the outages were due to factors such as ice on power lines or downed trees, and not the performance of the Texas power grid that buckled for days during a deadly winter storm in 2021.

Fleets of emergency vehicles were fanned out among 1,600 roads impacted by the freeze.

In Texas, a sheriff’s deputy who stopped to help the driver of an 18-wheeler that went off an icy highway on Tuesday was hit by a second truck that pinned him beneath one of its tires, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

About 45 minutes after the crash on State Highway 130, the deputy was freed from the wreckage and taken to a hospital, where he was in surgery Tuesday afternoon, officials said. The deputy is expected to survive, officials said.