Ice, snow numb Northeast; South freezing in dark

Workmen clear snow from the steps on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014, as winter weather shut down Washington. After pummeling wide swaths of the South, a winter storm dumped nearly a foot of snow in Washington as it marched Northeast and threatened more power outages, traffic headaches and widespread closures for millions of residents. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Workmen clear snow from the steps on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014, as winter weather shut down Washington. After pummeling wide swaths of the South, a winter storm dumped nearly a foot of snow in Washington as it marched Northeast and threatened more power outages, traffic headaches and widespread closures for millions of residents. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

PHILADELPHIA - Yet another storm paralyzed the Northeast with heavy snow and sleet Thursday, while hundreds of thousands across the ice-encrusted South waited in the cold for the electricity to come back on.

At least 21 deaths have been blamed on the weather this week, including that of a pregnant woman who was struck and killed by a mini-snowplow in a New York City parking lot as she loaded groceries into her car.

The sloppy mix of snow and face-stinging sleet grounded about 6,500 flights Thursday and closed schools and businesses as it made its way up the heavily populated Interstate 95 corridor.

Airline cancellations in the U.S. surged to the most since 2012’s Hurricane Sandy as a winter storm battered hub airports in New York, the nation’s biggest aviation market, and elsewhere along the East Coast.

“Anybody who’s operating in the Northeast corridor is having a bad day today,” Josh Marks, chief executive officer of industry data tracker MasFlight, said in a telephone interview.

Since Tuesday, 11,313 flights throughout the U.S. have been canceled, said Flight-Aware, a Houston-based airline tracking service. As of 6:46 p.m. New York time, 6,484 were scrubbed Thursday, including about 86 percent from and 85 percent to Washington’s Reagan National Airport.

On Thursday afternoon, 18 flights at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/ Adams Field had been canceled because of the storm. Delta had scratched half of its flights to and from Atlanta, while U.S. Airways had canceled all of its flights from Little Rock to Charlotte, N.C. Baltimore and Washington, D.C., flights had also been canceled or delayed due to weather.

At Dulles International Airport and Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, temporary runway closures caused delays not only for Little Rock, but throughout the Southeast and Northeast, according to Clinton National Airport/Adams Field spokesman Shane Carter.

“Thankfully the airlines are able to communicate with the majority of passengers before they reach the airport. That is something that was going on yesterday and continues today,” Carter said Thursday.

At Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, at least 12 flights to and from the snow-pummeled cities of Charlotte, N.C.; New York; and Newark, N.J., had been scratched Thursday, spokesman Scott Van Lanningham said. Atlanta flights were canceled as well.

At Baltimore Washington International, Charlotte Douglas International and Reagan National, 80 percent or more of flights were grounded Thursday. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the largest U.S. airport by traffic, had 35 percent of scheduled takeoffs eliminated, data provider FlightAware reported.

Reagan National was virtually silent, with all flights canceled. Travelers tried to catch some sleep in the terminals.

Disruptions extend beyond the Northeast with 5 percent of flights canceled at Los Angeles International Airport and San Francisco International Airport, said Mark Duell, vice president of operations at FlightAware.

A total of about 860 flights Thursday into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport have been canceled, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware. That represents about 30 percent of the total flights for the day at Atlanta’s airport, which is the major hub for Delta Air Lines.

Local and state officials in more than a dozen states scrambled to handle the blast of winter weather, the latest in a series of storms that have left many communities short on critical supplies - especially salt - needed to mitigate the effects of snow and ice.

“It is a storm that has brought wide-ranging effects, from heavy snow and ice to severe weather, including strong winds and hail, down south,” said Joey Picca, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Philadelphia had nearly 9 inches, its fourth 6-inch snowstorm of the season - the first time that has happened in the city since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. New York City received nearly 10 inches, and parts of New Jersey had more than 11.

The Boston area was expecting 4 to 6, while inland Connecticut and Massachusetts were looking at a foot or more.

In New York, Min Lin, 36, died after she was struck by a utility vehicle with a snowplow attached to it as it backed up outside a shopping center in Brooklyn. Her nearly full-term baby was delivered in critical condition via cesarean section.

No immediate charges were brought against the snowplow operator.

Virginia State Police said three people were injured when an ambulance crashed on a slick southwest Virginia road.

The single-vehicle crash took place Thursday morning in Scott County when the Nickelsville Volunteer Rescue Squad ambulance ran off the right side of Route 71, struck a rock ledge and overturned onto its side.

Officials said the ambulance was not on an emergency transport but did have an adult female patient onboard that was headed for Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, Tenn.

The driver of the ambulance, a medic and the patient were all transported to Holston Valley Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.

Utility crews in the South toiled to restore electricity to more than 800,000 homes and businesses, mostly in the Carolinas and Georgia. Temperatures in the hard-hit Atlanta area, with more than 200,000 failures, were expected to drop below freezing again overnight.

Baltimore awoke to 15 inches of snow. Washington, D.C., had at least 8, and federal offices and the city’s two main airports were closed. The Virginia-West Virginia state line got more than a foot.

In North Carolina, where the storm caused huge traffic jams in the Raleigh area on Wednesday as people left work and rushed to get home in the middle of the day, National Guardsmen in high-riding Humvees patrolled the snowy roads, looking for any stranded motorists.

As National Guard troops and highway patrol officers rescued motorists from abandoned cars and checked other vehicles left on the roadsides during Wednesday’s traffic jams, people struggled to dig out their cars from roadsides. The North Carolina highway patrol responded to nearly 3,000 calls for assistance and 1,900 traffic accidents, according to the patrol commander, Col. Bill Grey.

The governor said only cars blocking travel lanes were being towed - about 140 vehicles by mid-morning. Hundreds of other cars scattered across highway shoulders and medians will not be towed, McCrory said.

A half-inch or more of ice fell across a wide area of central Georgia, including in Augusta and Marietta, the Weather Prediction Center said. Three inches coated Forest Acres, S.C., where the state asked people not to drive until the storm passed.

The procession of storms and cold blasts - blamed in part on a kink in the jet stream, the high-altitude air currents that dictate weather - has cut into retail sales across the U.S., the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Sales dipped 0.4 percent in January.

In New York City, the teachers union and TV weatherman Al Roker harshly criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to keep the schools open. Roker, who was in Russia for the Winter Olympics but has a daughter in New York’s public schools, said on Twitter: “It’s going to take some kid or kids getting hurt before this goofball policy gets changed.”

The head of the city’s teachers union issued a statement disagreeing with the city’s decision.

“I understand the desire to keep schools open. The only thing that trumps that is safety,” said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers. “Having students, parents and staff traveling in these conditions was unwarranted. It was a mistake to open schools today.”

The mayor said many parents depend on schools to watch over their children while they are at work.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York declared a state of emergency for parts of the state, including New York City and Long Island.

In New Jersey, the Garden State Parkway ground to a standstill for some 5 miles on northbound lanes after an accident. New Jersey Transit, at the request of emergency officials, suspended all bus service in Essex County.

Gov. Chris Christie declared a state of emergency and urged caution.

Information for this article was contributed by Mark Scolforo, Ron Todt, Kevin Begos, Michael Rubinkam, Kathy Matheson, Sarah Brumfield, Brett Zongker, Matthew Barakat, David Dishneau and staff members of The Associated Press; by J. Kyle O’Donnell, Mary Schlangenstein, Brian K. Sullivan, Lynn Doan, Jim Polson, Cheyenne Hopkins, Duane D. Stanford, Rebecca Penty and Freeman Klopott of Bloomberg News; by Alan Blinder, Kate Pastor, Eli Rosenberg, Nate Schweber, Alex Vadukul, Marc Santora and Kim Severson of The New York Times; by Richard Simon, Alana Semuels, Michael Muskal, Daniel Rothberg, Lalita Clozel and David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times; and by Scott Carroll of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/14/2014

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