More than 95 million Americans were under winter weather warnings or advisories as of Friday morning, and thousands of flights had been canceled.
The storm is expected to deliver a mix of ice, sleet and freezing rain to major cities, including New York City and Boston beginning early Friday — though the cities aren’t expected to see heavy snow.
Still, forecasters are warning road conditions could be dangerous, including in portions of eastern Rhode Island and northeastern New Jersey.
Similar conditions in the central and southern US on Thursday led to the deaths of at least three people.
In New Mexico, two people died in weather-related crashes. Another person died in Alabama during what forecasters determined was a likely tornado.
More than 3 feet of snow piled up in one part of New Mexico. In the Midwest, more than a foot of snow fell across several states, with some areas in the Chicago metro area experiencing as many as 11 inches, forecasters said.
The expansive system — whose reach was projected to span about 2,000 miles from the Rockies to New England — also created an ice storm that brought dangerous conditions from Arkansas through Ohio.
Nearly half of the outages were in Tennessee, which also saw piling ice and threats of flooding. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said it expects outages and travel issues to persist into Friday.
Meanwhile in Texas, more than 16,000 homes and businesses were in the dark early Friday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Gov. Greg Abbott said in a briefing Thursday that the grid has “plenty of power available at this time,” calling the weather “one of…
Source : cnn
