Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
At least 8 people die as South slammed with ice and snow
ATLANTA — A layer of snow and ice and a recordbreaking blast of cold closed runways, highways, schools and government offices across the South and sent cars sliding off roads Wednesday in a swath of the country illequipped to deal with wintry weather.
At least eight people died. Among them was a baby in a car that plunged off an icy overpass into a Louisiana canal.
Icicles hung from a statue of jazz musicians in normally balmy New Orleans, and drivers unaccustomed to ice spun their wheels across Atlanta, which was brought to a near-standstill by little more than an inch of snow. The Biloxi, Miss., coast got a light coating. And the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill canceled classes as the storm unloaded at least 4 inches by late morning and grew to 8 inches in some places.
Even the best drivers had trouble: Retired NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted that he used his winch to help pull a car out of a ditch in North Carolina, then drove off the road into a tree himself.
“NC stay off the roads today/tonight. 5 minutes after helping these folks I center punched a pine tree,” he reported. A spokesman said Earnhardt was not hurt and his pickup had only minor damage.
By midday, skies were bright and sunny in many places, but roads were likely to remain icy into Thursday.
The mercury dropped to record lows overnight in several places in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
At least four people died in Louisiana, including a man who was knocked off an elevated portion of Interstate 10 in New Orleans when a pickup spun out of control on ice, and an 8-month-old baby who was in a car that slid into a canal in suburban New Orleans. The baby’s mother was reported in critical condition.
Two others died along an icy stretch of I-75 southeast of Atlanta when a driver lost control and hit them, one of them inside a stopped car and the other standing beside it, authorities said. One person died in a weather-related traffic accident in West Virginia, and a homeless man was found dead, apparently of exposure, in freezing Houston.
In Memphis, Tenn., police said a woman whose body was found in the snow in a park near City Hall may have died of exposure to the cold weather.