A sprawling winter storm will continue to coat parts of the Southern Plains and Southeast with ice and sleet through Thursday morning, bringing frigid temperatures and creating travel disruptions for millions, meteorologists said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 20 million people from southeast New Mexico and much of Texas up to West Virginia were under a winter weather advisory, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm, which began on Monday, had already begun wreaking havoc on air travel. More than 2,700 flights within, into or out of the United States were canceled Tuesday, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking company. Most of the cancellations were reported in Texas, including more than 700 flights at airports in Dallas and Austin.
At least two people were killed in weather-related accidents in Texas on Tuesday, and the Austin Fire Department said that it had responded to more than 90 accidents, including three involving its own units. Hazardous ice and snow were reported on roads throughout the state.
Several rounds of mixed precipitation, mostly freezing rain and sleet, were predicted through the middle of the week. Ice accumulations of more than a quarter of an inch were expected from West Texas to western Tennessee, with isolated amounts of three-quarters of an inch.
“This amount of ice will likely lead to tree damage and scattered power outages across the hardest-hit regions,” meteorologists said in a weather advisory. “Sleet accumulations around a half-inch or locally higher are also possible from West Texas to Arkansas, which can also lead to treacherous travel.”
By Tuesday afternoon, more than 30,000 customers were without power in Texas, according to PowerOutage.us, which aggregates data from utilities across the country.
At a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that local outages were expected because of icing on power lines. “The power grid is functioning just fine as we speak,” he said.
Governor Abbott also said that driving conditions in many parts of the state “are extremely dangerous” and urged that people “use extra caution on the roadway.” He warned of black ice, which could cause vehicles to glide and roll over.
“There’s a lot of vehicle accidents across the state,” he said, noting that crews used 1.3 million gallons of brine and other materials to treat roadways.
At the news conference, Steven C. McGraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that a state trooper was injured and taken to a hospital after a person “who was driving too fast for the conditions lost control and ran into our trooper.”
The Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services department said on Twitter that it had also responded to several crashes in the region on Tuesday that included three rollover incidents, eight traffic injuries and rescues involving two vehicles. Ice has been accumulating on overpasses and elevated roadways, the agency said.
The conditions led to one fatality in a crash that involved 10 vehicles, according to the Austin Fire Department.
The police in Arlington said on Facebook on Tuesday that one person had died in a rollover accident on Interstate 20.
Citing the weather conditions, the Dallas Zoo announced it would be closed through Wednesday.
The Dallas Independent School District, which has more than 150,000 students, canceled classes on Tuesday, and the city’s mayor, Eric Johnson, urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel.
The Austin Independent School District also canceled classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the city said it would provide shelters for those in need.
Other areas across the South were busy preparing for dangerous weather this week. Mayor Frank Scott Jr. of Little Rock, Ark., said on Twitter on Tuesday that crews were monitoring the extreme weather conditions. City facilities were closed on Tuesday and an emergency shelter had opened.
And in Nashville, schools were scheduled to open two hours late on Tuesday because of freezing rain in the forecast.
In West Virginia, the state’s office of emergency management urged residents to prepare ahead of the storm, including by talking with employers about weather policies and gathering emergency supplies. The office also warned of a wintry mix that could create “hazardous road conditions” in Charleston and other cities.
This winter has brought a mixed bag of weather to large swaths of the South. Last week, a tornado tore through communities southeast of Houston, destroying a senior assisted-living center and causing other damage. In Louisiana, three people were hospitalized with injuries after storms damaged mobile homes northwest of Baton Rouge. Earlier this month, at least eight people were killed after a string of severe storms and tornadoes roared through Alabama and Georgia.
Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.
Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.
