Powerful US storms create blizzard conditions and threaten to spawn tornadoes
Three people have died as a result of stormy weather in the US.
Powerful storms that killed three people in Mississippi and ripped roofs from buildings in a small Oklahoma town have charged across America, threatening more communities in the central to eastern United States.
Meanwhile, forecasters warned that a Pacific storm was expected to bring widespread rain and mountain snow across California and other parts of the West from Wednesday into Friday.
Tornado warnings were issued in the Carolinas, Florida and Virginia on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, high winds forced some changes to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which moved up and shortened the two biggest parades to wrap them up ahead of the bad weather.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday blamed severe weather for three deaths.
WAPT-TV reported that in Madison County one person died from a falling power line and another was killed by a tree falling on his car. A woman in Clarke County died when a tree limb fell on her outside her home, WLBT-TV reported.
At least seven confirmed tornadoes touched down on Tuesday in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, according to preliminary information from the weather service. That number could increase on Wednesday, with potential for severe storms stretching from Florida to New York state, said Bill Bunting, deputy director of the agency’s Storm Prediction Centre.
Blizzard conditions hit eastern Nebraska overnight into Wednesday, bringing around four inches of snow and winds of up to 65mph, limiting visibility and closing numerous snowy roads, including a stretch of Interstate 80.
The Minneapolis-St Paul area, southern Minnesota and much of Iowa were on the downward slide of a powerful winter storm.
The storm brought the heaviest snow of the season to Minneapolis, where the National Weather Service reported 7.4 inches at the airport, and it was still falling early Wednesday. That easily beat the 5.5 inches that fell at the airport on December 19.
Other parts of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area got hit even harder, with 11 inches reported in Stillwater and Woodbury and some communities getting as much as 12 to 13 inches.
“I wouldn’t want to say it’s unheard of or unusual but it’s still pretty remarkable to see the power of nature with these storms,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jacob Beitlich said.
The slippery roads led to dozens of crashes, the Minnesota State Patrol reported.
The storms have left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity service on Wednesday morning across the central and south-eastern United States, including more than 98,000 customers in Texas, about 48,000 in Tennessee and about 42,000 in Alabama, according to PowerOutage.us.
Gusts in the north-east US could also lead to ground stops or delays at major airports in that region, the Federal Aviation Administration said in its operational plan for the day.
The storm was beginning to snarl traffic at some of America’s busiest airports on the East Coast, which typically causes ripple effects throughout the nation’s commercial aviation system.
Nearly 600 flights scheduled to fly into or out of US airports on Wednesday have been cancelled, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks cancellations and delays nationwide.
