Storms dump snow, cut power in US east

WASHINGTON — Storms dumped heavy snow and freezing rain on a swath of the US east, from Kentucky to the nation's capital, causing hundreds of traffic accidents, knocking out power in places and threatening to flood waterways as temperatures began rising on Wednesday.

California, meanwhile, was bracing for an atmospheric river that could flood areas ravaged by the recent wildfires.

The storm system, which cut a path from Kentucky to Maryland and points farther north on Tuesday, brought more than 36 centimeters of snow to Iron Gate, a tiny Appalachian town in western Virginia, and 30 cm to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, a small city about 105 kilometers to the west, the National Weather Service said.

By Wednesday, more than 190,000 customers in Virginia and nearly 16,000 in North Carolina had lost electricity, according to power outage tracking site PowerOutage.us. Appalachian Power, which serves a million customers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, said more than 5,700 workers were trying to restore power.

The region's airports received several inches of snow, said Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist with the weather service's Weather Prediction Center.

"After a pretty quiet few seasons here, things have kind of picked back up again," he said.

Nearly 7,000 flights were canceled or delayed across the United States, including almost 300 at the Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware.com.

Schools were shut throughout Virginia for a second straight day, and districts in the Baltimore and Washington areas also told students and teachers to take Wednesday off.

Flood threat

The snow-and-ice mix was expected to become rain by the afternoon as temperatures climbed. Concerns emerged about rain and melting snow washing into rivers and streams in regions already saturated from previous storms.

A flood threat through Thursday morning stretched from eastern Tennessee to southwestern Virginia into other parts of the south, the weather service said.

"Our main concern once we get into Thursday will be potential flooding impacts as we see rivers and streams swell with the combined impact of melting snowpack and rain at the same time," said Vance Joyner, a weather service meteorologist in Blacksburg, Virginia.

In Kentucky, snowy roads caused a head-on fatal crash on Tuesday in Nelson County, south of Louisville. The driver of a car lost control going into a curve, crossed the center line and hit an oncoming semitruck head on, according to the county's emergency management director, Brad Metcalf. The driver died at the scene.

In Virginia, where Governor Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency, state police reported about 850 crashes on Tuesday and Wednesday, dozens of which involved injuries. Officials said it was not known if they were caused by the weather.

Maryland State Police reported 235 crashes and 185 inoperable or unattended vehicles.

In southern West Virginia, multiple crashes temporarily shut down several major highways on Tuesday.

Agencies Via Xinhua