A swath of sleet and snow has halted traffic across the central United States, canceled thousands of flights, cut power to hundreds of thousands of people and caused six deaths in Texas.
Forecasters are warning of more dangerous road conditions as winter storms hit Wednesday for the third straight day.
Many areas of the day were expected to experience several mixed precipitation events, including freezing rain and sleet, which could lead to multiple rains in some areas, forecasters said.
“It’s actually looking like it’s going to get worse again across Texas,” said Bob Olavek, chief forecaster for the National Weather Service in Camp Springs, Maryland. said.
Oravec said the winter weather is expected to move northeast, across parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, into western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, and then taper off.
“By Thursday afternoon, the rainfall should have largely subsided, with parts of the south seeing a significant drop in rainfall and heavy rain for most parts,” Oravec said.
Cancellation, blackout
By Wednesday morning, a total of 1,897 flights inside and outside the United States had been canceled and 750 flights were delayed as of 8:41 a.m. ET, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
American Airlines Group said in a statement that “this week’s winter storms are impacting our operations,” adding that it has proactively canceled flights and notified passengers.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tweeted that snow conditions in Dallas, Fort Worth and Memphis could delay flights.
“Ongoing winter storms will continue to have dangerous effects in northern and central Texas through at least early Thursday morning,” the National Weather Service said in a forecast discussion for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
According to PowerOutage, a website that tracks utility reports, Texas has reported more than 241,000 power outages, with nearly 114,000 in the state capital, Austin.
Pablo Vegas, chairman and CEO of the Texas Power Reliability Council, said the state’s power grid and natural gas supply are reliable and that the February 2021 outage will not be repeated and the grid is in danger of completely failing. was on the verge of
Emergency responders rushed to hundreds of crashes across Texas on Tuesday, with Gov. Greg Abbott urging people not to drive.
At least six people have died on slippery Texas roads since Monday.
In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency Tuesday due to freezing conditions. Citing “a number of power lines may be cut,” her declaration said road conditions had created a backlog of deliveries by commercial drivers.
