Icy Weather In Southeast Kills One
A blast of freezing rain across Georgia and the Carolinas Thursday closed schools, snarled traffic and caused power outages to more than 450,000 customers.
At least one death in North Carolina was blamed on the storm when an ice-covered tree crashed through a man's house.
The widespread outages were caused by the ice that formed on tree limbs and fell onto power lines.
While electricity was quickly restored to some, outages by early evening still totaled 260,000 in upstate South Carolina, 113,000 in western and central North Carolina, 55,000 in northeast Georgia and nearly 35,000 in the Atlanta area.
In addition, 10 school systems were closed in Georgia and more than a dozen closed in North Carolina, where mountain communities in the western part of the state were told to expect 1 to 3 inches of snow and sleet.
"We woke up at about 4 o'clock and heard a tree smashing through the house. It actually smashed into our son's room," Matt Simon in Sandy Spring, Ga. "And we just ran in and that tree just completely uprooted. I mean, it looks like it was just pushed down."
The weather also caused delays of more than an hour at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Forecasters expected the temperatures to increase above freezing across much of the region by Thursday afternoon, but then dip back to freezing overnight.
The freezing rain began falling about 2:30 a.m. in the Charlotte, N.C., area, and very quickly the bridges and overpasses began to freeze up. Within the span of just half an hour, there were dozens of accidents in western North Carolina, says CBS News reporter Pete Combs.
"I drove a span of about 12 miles, from one part of east Charlotte around to the northwest side. In that 12 miles, I saw seven separate accidents," Combs reports.
As the storm moves up the East Coast Thursday, New York City was not only bracing for the storm by the evening, but also its first bus and subway strike in more than 25 years. More than 7 million people a day use the transit system. The contract for the Transit Workers Union's 33,000 members expires at 12:01 a.m. Friday.
If the workers walk out, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to implement major restrictions on driving in the city.
Heavy snowfall was predicted Thursday for northern New York and Vermont.
The storm could also produce severe weather across Florida. Thunderstorms were predicted for the northern part of the state, while forecasters said gusty winds, hail and even an isolated tornado was possible.
Maine's largest city is awaiting approval of a state discharge permit that could allow it to begin dumping truckloads of fresh snow from downtown streets into Portland Harbor by the end of the month.
Portland presently hauls snow from congested downtown streets to locations several miles inland, where it piles up and forms a grimy glacier before melting by spring.
Because snow picks up pollutants while falling through the air or while covering streets and parking lots, ocean disposal raises environmental concerns.