‘Serious’ storm knocks out power to thousands
In Southeast, 400,000 homes are without power, which could be out for days
A winter storm bringing havoc to airline and highway traffic crawled east on Sunday, pummeling the Southeast with snow and sleet. More than 400,000 homes and businesses were left without power.
A winter storm bringing havoc to airline and highway traffic across much of the nation crawled east Sunday, pummeling the Southeast with snow and sleet.
More than 400,000 homes and businesses were without power in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama on Sunday. Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed from Texas to the Carolinas.
In North Carolina, more than 1,000 flights were canceled in and out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport alone. Parts of North Carolina could see snow measured in feet rather than inches before the storm finally rolls out to sea.
“That’s where the weather was expected to be the worst and it certainly has lived up to the forecast,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Eric Leister told USA TODAY.
In western North Carolina, the little town of Saluda, population 700, was
buried under 20 inches of snow by midafternoon. It was still snowing. Other areas of the state and parts of southern Virginia were dealing with 12-18 inches.
Gov. Roy Cooper knew it was coming and declared a state of emergency before the first flake fell Saturday.
“This is a snowstorm, not a snowfall – it’s serious,” Cooper said. “We’re preparing for days of impact, not hours.”
Cooper warned that utility companies projected widespread power outages affecting over half a million homes and businesses before the storm passes. More than 250,000 outages were reported Sunday afternoon.
In some areas, power could be out for days, Cooper said.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam also declared a state of emergency in advance, urging state residents to “take all necessary precautions to ensure they are prepared” for the storm.
The warning was well-founded. While the rural, western part of the state took the big numbers, urban Richmond was paralyzed by several inches of snow. The city could get six before it ends on Monday, with areas just north of the city getting a few more.
“Once again I am asking drivers to slow down,” said Chesterfield County Police Lieutenant P.J. Cimbal. “We’re working several crashes due to drivers misjudgment of road conditions.”
The storm rolled out of Southern California early last week after slamming the region with heavy rains that triggered mudslides in wildfire-scarred hillsides. It continued east, leaving a swath of power outages, delayed and canceled flights and dangerous road conditions in its wake.
In Texas, Lubbock was blasted with more than 10 inches of snow. Hundreds of miles to the southeast, the storm brought more than six inches of rain to areas around Houston.
College Station, home to Texas A&M University, reported 4 inches of rain, shattering a record set in 1931, the National Weather Service said.
Parts of Tennessee and Kentucky were then treated to what Leister described as an “ice event.” Some areas saw a quarter inch of ice, making roads impassable. Then the storm rolled into the Carolinas and Virginia as a snowmaker.
“It has been a stubborn, long-lasting storm,” Leister said. “There will be lingering pockets to snow and freezing rain across parts of North Carolina and Virginia tomorrow, but the storm is headed out to the Atlantic.”