Police pleaded with motorists to stay off frozen freeways. Ice on power lines forced public transportation officials to suspend the region's light rail service.
Dallas' woes are part of a severe cold snap stretching more than a 1,000 miles from the southern Plains to New England.
"This will be the worst ice storm for the United States since January 2009 and will affect many of the same areas as that storm," said Jesse Ferrell, weather expert and storm chaser for AccuWeather.com.
The National Weather Service issued ice and winter storm advisories for more than a dozen states. Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee — where thousands are also without power — have already declared states of emergency. Treacherous driving conditions were blamed for several deaths across the country, according to The Associated Press.
The hardest-hit areas could see more of the same by Saturday when a second storm system, which is already bringing snow to parts of California, Oregon and Nevada, pushes east across the Plains and into the Midwest.
The frigid forecast was unwelcome news to some 25,000 runners who had planned to participate in Sunday's Dallas Marathon. Race officials called off the event early Friday afternoon.
"We regret that the race will not go on as planned, but are confident this decision is in the best interest of our runners, volunteers, spectators and the general public," the organizers wrote on their website.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Etisalat. Enjoy high speed mobile broadband on any of our Easyblaze plans. Visit www.etisalat.com.ng for details.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment