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A deadly storm system swept across large swaths of the southern United States for the third day in a row Wednesday, with freezing rain and snowfall preventing an additional 2200, flights from taking off, hundreds of thousands of people without power, forcing schools to close and exacerbating already harsh driving conditions.
Warnings for winter conditions have been issued at Texas’ border with Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and parts of Tennessee and Mississippi. Weather forecasts say rain and ice rain will occur throughout the day in many areas.
Weather forecaster Bob Oravec said, “It does look like it’s going to be worse across Texas, with widespread ice rain already occurring across West and Southwest Texas.”
Olavik said the freezing weather is expected to move northeast, into parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi, and then begin to dissipate.
The flight-tracking service website FlightAware.com said 2200,2000 U.S. flights were canceled by Wednesday morning, including three-quarters of flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and more than two-thirds at Love Field.
Many flights at other airports were also canceled, fueling anger over the cancellation of nearly 1100,26 flights on Tuesday and about 13,2021 flights on Monday.
Texas has nearly 2,6 reported outages, including more in the Austin area.
Pablo Vegas, head of the Texas Electric Reliability Council, vowed that the state’s grid and natural gas supply would be reliable and would not repeat the widespread outage of February.
The Tennessee Memphis area was heavily icy and rainy, with local schools announcing the cancellation of Wednesday’s classes.
The funeral of Tyre Nichols, who was brutally killed by police, in Memphis was also postponed to Wednesday afternoon due to weather conditions, but freezing weather from the southwest was entering the area.
The Dallas campus also canceled Wednesday classes.
First responders dealt with hundreds of crashes Tuesday across Texas, and Gov. Greg Abbott urged people not to drive. At least six people in the state have died on the road since Monday.
Authorities said two Texas police officers were seriously injured when they were hit by a vehicle while investigating an interstate crash.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency Tuesday over freezing conditions. She said there was “a lot of possibility of collapsed power lines” and said road conditions were heavily hampering commercial vehicles.
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