Southeast braces for major winter storm
ATLANTA — Forecasts of snow and ice as far south as Georgia have put a big part of the Southeast on an emergency preparedness footing as shoppers scoured store shelves for storm supplies and crews raced to treat highways and roads as a major winter storm approached from the Midwest.
In Virginia, where a blizzard left thousands of motorists trapped on clogged highways earlier this month, outgoing Gov. Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency and urged people to take the approaching storm seriously. In North Carolina, some store shelves were stripped bare of essentials including bread and milk.
By Friday, the fast-moving storm had already dropped heavy snow across a large swath of the Midwest, where travel conditions deteriorated and scores of schools closed or moved to online instruction. Iowa was hit the hardest. Brad Small, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the airport in Des Moines saw more than 14 inches of snow and a big swath of the central and southern Iowa recorded between 9 inches and a foot of snow.
The Iowa State Patrol had reported that 207 motorists were assisted and 78 crashes had occurred in the four hours between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Friday, according to the Des Moines Register.
And in Chicago, the streets and sanitation department was on Saturday morning equipping more than 200 trucks with snow plow blades to keep the streets passable during and after the expected storm.
Parts of Tennessee could get as much as 6 inches of snow, forecasters said, and northern Mississippi and the Tennessee Valley region of Alabama could receive light snow accumulations.