At least 10 dead as record freeze, snow, ice plunge into Deep South
ATLANTA — Snow, ice and a record-breaking blast of cold closed runways, highways, schools and government offices across the South and sent cars sliding off roads Wednesday in a corner of the country illequipped to deal with wintry weather. At least 10 people died, including a baby in a car that plunged off a slippery 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 nearstandstill by little more than an inch of snow.
Beach gets coated
The beach in Biloxi, Miss., got a light coating. And the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill canceled classes as the storm unloaded at least 8 inches of snow in Durham and Greensboro.
The storm turned the morning rush hour treacherous.
Even the best drivers had trouble: Retired NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted that he had just used his winch to help pull a car out of a ditch when he drove off the road and into a tree in North Carolina.
“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 temperatures were expected to remain below freezing throughout the day in much of the region, and roads are likely to remain icy into Thursday.
Thousands of schoolchildren and teachers got the day off. Many cities canceled meetings and court proceedings, and some businesses closed. Slippery runways and the need to de-ice planes forced cancellations and delays in New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Electricity usage surged to record highs as people struggled to keep warm.
The mercury dropped to record lows overnight in several places in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. It was 21 degrees before dawn in New Orleans, breaking the city’s record of 23, set on the same date in 1977.
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.
Dying of exposure
One person died in a weatherrelated traffic accident in West Virginia. In the freezing Houston area, a homeless man was found dead behind a trash bin, apparently of exposure, while an 82-year-old woman with dementia succumbed to the cold after walking away from her home.
Also, a woman was discovered dead in a snowy park near City Hall in Memphis, Tenn. The temperature was around 10 degrees when she was found.
Along the Gulf Coast, ice pellets covered the tops of sago palm trees, and stretches of I-10 were closed in Louisiana and across Alabama’s Mobile Bay.