Ice, snow sting Deep South; Midwest gets numbing cold

Travel stalls, schools close, 6 states declare emergencies

Traffic inches along the connector of Interstates 75 and 85 as snow blankets Atlanta on Tuesday. The winter storm caused Georgia alligators to burrow into the mud for warmth, closed the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway in Louisiana and left icicles on palm trees in Gulf Shores, Ala.
Traffic inches along the connector of Interstates 75 and 85 as snow blankets Atlanta on Tuesday. The winter storm caused Georgia alligators to burrow into the mud for warmth, closed the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway in Louisiana and left icicles on palm trees in Gulf Shores, Ala.

ATLANTA - The mad rush began at the first sight of snow. Across the Atlanta area, schools let out early and commuters left for home, instantly creating gridlock so severe that security guards and doormen took to the streets to direct cars amid a cacophony of blaring horns.


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A winter storm all but paralyzed areas of the Deep South on Tuesday, carrying snow, ice and teeth-chattering cold to a region where many people aren’t familiar with driving in snow and many cities don’t have big fleets of salt trucks or snowplows. Hundreds of wrecks happened across the region.

Up to 4 inches of snow fell in central Louisiana, and about 3 inches were forecast for parts of Georgia. Up to 10 inches were expected in the Greenville, N.C., area and along the state’s Outer Banks.

The governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi declared states of emergency.

Georgia State Patrol troopers responded to more than 500 crashes throughout the state between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday, patrol spokesman Gordy Wright said. By Tuesday evening, 65 injuries and no fatalities had been reported.

Police in suburban Atlanta helped deliver a baby girl on a freeway where the snow and ice slowed traffic to a crawl.

In Alabama, as much as 4 inches of frozen precipitation stranded thousands of children and adults in schools and businesses, caused multiple wrecks and coated palm trees with ice at the beach.

State troopers said a seven-vehicle crash that killed two people and injured five others near Wetumpka was likely caused by ice on a road, and authorities suspected that weather also was to blame for a crash that killed a 64-year-old woman in Perry County. Jackknifed 18-wheelers littered Interstate 65 in central Alabama.

While north Alabama was supposed to get only a trace of snow and ice, roads were slippery from Birmingham to the Tennessee line. Drivers abandoned hundreds of cars, and many walked home from work in freezing temperatures.

At Oak Mountain Intermediate School near Birmingham, Ala., Principal Pat LeQuier said about 230 of the school’s fourth- and fifth-graders, and nearly all teachers and staff members were still on campus by late afternoon, and some could wind up spending the night, since parents were stuck in traffic or at work.

“We have a toasty building, a fully stocked kitchen, and I’m not worried,” LeQuier said.

In east Tennessee, snowfall led several school districts to call off classes early, and slippery roads complicated getting students home. Buses in Sevier County were having trouble as road conditions worsened, and some turned around and carried students back to school.

Sevier County Assistant Superintendent Debra Cline said the district was using four-wheel-drive vehicles from various agencies to take home students whose parents were unable to pick them up. All of the affected children had made it home by Tuesday afternoon.

In Mississippi, four people were killed in a mobile home fire blamed on a space heater. Meanwhile, state officials said Interstate 55 southbound was closed Tuesday evening after two tractor-trailer trucks jackknifed at the Copiah/Lincoln county line. Northbound I-55 was limited to one lane in the same area because of a third big-rig crash.

New Orleans’ merry Bourbon Street in the French Quarter was oddly quiet as brass bands and other street performers stayed indoors.

Lee and Virginia Holt of Wayne, Pa., walked into Cafe du Monde after finding the National World War II Museum closed because of the weather.

“We understand they don’t have the equipment to prepare the roads,” she said. Her husband added: “Nor the experience.”

Ice closed the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, one of the world’s longest bridges, and about 20 highways in Louisiana.

State police in central Louisiana dealt with about 20 wrecks during one two-hour span Tuesday morning. But all were minor, and troopers around the state said most people seemed to be heeding advice to stay home.

Sheriff Louis Ackal placed all of Iberia Parish under a curfew from Tuesday night until this morning.

In Savannah,Ga., residents braced for a winter whiplash barely 24 hours after the coastal city hit a T-shirt-friendly 73 degrees. Less than a quarter-inch of ice and up to an inch of snow were possible in a city that has seen very little of such weather in the past 25 years.

Savannah had 3.6 inches of snow in December 1989, a dusting of 0.2 inches in February 1996 and 0.9 inches in February 2010.

Phil Sellers leads walking tours rain or shine of Savannah’s oak-shaded squares, bronze Civil War monuments and Victorian neighborhoods. But come ice and snow, he will stay inside.

“Usually what happens in Savannah is everything stops immediately when you first see a snowflake,” he said. “Everyone’s jaw drops.”

At grocery stores across the region, shoppers mostly cleaned out shelves of bottled water, bread, milk and boxed fire logs.

Snow covered Atlanta’s statues of civil-rights heroes, and snowplows that rarely leave the garage rolled out onto the city’s streets. At a hardware store in the Georgia town of Cumming, snow shovels were in short supply, but manager Tom Maron said feed scoops - often used in barns - could be substituted.

In Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, the alligators burrowed into the mud to keep warm.

“Their metabolism slows down so they’re able to not breathe as often, so they don’t have to come to the surface as often,” said Susan Heisey, a supervisory ranger at the national wildlife refuge. “These alligators have been on this earth a long time, and they’ve made it through.”

The snow and ice also stranded travelers at airports. The hardest-hit by cancellations Tuesday was also the world’s busiest: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where more than 806 flights were canceled by 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.

Nationwide, more than 3,200 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Tuesday, according to statistics from FlightAware. Only a couple of hundred flights are canceled in the U.S. on a typical day. Houston’s Bush Intercontinental and Chicago’s O’Hare International also were among the hardest-hit airports.

Traffic into and out of New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International was halted, according to the airport’s website. Birmingham International Airport in Alabama was closed for several hours, the Federal Aviation Administration website said.

On the East Coast, southern New Jersey, the eastern tip of Long Island and Cape Cod in Massachusetts were expected to get some light, fluffy snow overnight, said Alex Sosnowski, a meteorologist with Accu-Weather Inc. in State College, Pa.

The National Weather Service said as much as 4 inches may fall after midnight and into the early morning in Long Island and New Jersey.

“Compared to what we have had this year, it will be a drop in the bucket,” Sosnowski said.

While the storm was moving up the East Coast, the cold was keeping its grip on the Midwest. Chicago and Minneapolis closed schools Tuesday because of the cold, according to system websites.

In Minnesota, forecasters said the wind chill - the combined effect of the wind and low temperatures on exposed skin - could reach 35-50 degrees below zero.

The temperature at Chicago’s Midway Airport dipped to 11 degrees below zero before climbing to 2 degrees by midafternoon, the weather service said. Wind chill warnings stretched from North Dakota to western New York.

The wind in Chicago could make temperatures feel as cold as minus-40 degrees, the weather service said.

“This will result in frostbite and lead to hypothermia and death if precautions are not taken,” the agency said.

Temperatures dropped to 13 in New York’s Central Park and 14 at Reagan National Airport in Washington.

January is on track to be the coldest month of the 21st century in the contiguous U.S. in terms of natural-gas-weighted heating-degree days.

But this week’s cold will be short-lived for many, said Rob Carolan, founder of Hometown Forecast Services Inc. in Nashua, N.H. By the weekend, highs will be in the 60s and possibly the 70s across much of the South, Carolan said.

Information for this article was contributed by Ray Henry, Russ Bynum, Kate Brumback, Mike Graczyk, Bruce Smith, Jay Reeves, Ray Henry, Brock Vergakis, Janet McConnaughey, Kevin McGill, Jeff Martin, Stacey Plaisance, Phillip Lucas and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Brian K. Sullivan, Christine Buurma, Konstantin Rozhnov and Alexander Kwiatkowski of Bloomberg News.

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Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/29/2014

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