'A very dangerous situation': Nationwide winter storms cause power outages, hazardous travel

Grace Hauck and Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

Heavy snow and ice blasted the Pacific Northwest into Saturday morning, leaving hundreds of thousands without power, as portions of the Plains, the South and the Mid-Atlantic prepared for more snow and freezing rain into early next week.

Forecasters said Friday that the U.S. is enduring one of its busiest winter weather patterns "in decades." A bitterly cold arctic air mass draped across much of the country is fueling winter storms nationwide.

"A very active weekend is ahead for winter weather as large parts of the U.S. experience concerns for extreme cold temperatures, heavy snow and ice," the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center said on Twitter Saturday. "Coast to coast from the Pacific Northwest to the Mid-Atlantic, there is an array of winter weather headlines in effect. Stay safe!"

As of Saturday morning, nearly 300,000 people were without power in Oregon, according to Poweroutage.us, and portions of northwest Oregon were under an ice storm warning.

More than 100,000 more were without power in each of Virginia and North Carolina, along with tens of thousands in Washington state, Texas, Kentucky and West Virginia.

An ice storm warning was also in effect through Sunday for portions of southeast Maryland and eastern and southeast Virginia, where ice accumulations could reach one quarter to one half inch, the NWS said.

"Power outages and tree damage are expected due to the ice. Travel could be nearly impossible. The combination of the icing forecast and the snow and ice already on trees will make for a very dangerous situation," the NWS said.

Brutal winter weather shows no signs of letting up: Snow, ice, bitter cold to continue from coast to coast

A major winter storm is expected to develop over the Southern Plains Sunday into Monday with a large area of snow, sleet, and freezing rain expected, the NWS said.

Texas and portions of the South could see record-shattering cold over the next few days. At Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas, the current Monday afternoon forecast of a high of 24 degrees would be the coldest high on record since Dec. 22, 1990.

"For sections of the western Gulf coast, impactful winter weather is about a once a decade event," the NWS Prediction Center said on Twitter late Friday.

Saturday morning, parts of Texas saw "thundersleet," the National Weather Service said, warning that heavy freezing rain and sleet were expected to accumulate.

According to Weather.com, the coming storm will bring considerably worse weather conditions than what was seen early Thursday morning in Texas, when at least six people were killed and 65 others hospitalized – including frontline health care workers just getting off their shifts – in a massive chain-reaction crash that involved more than 100 vehicles on an icy interstate.

Some of the people injured in the crash were healthcare workers. One Fort Worth nurse, Rebecca Benson, crawled from her crushed car and walked up to a mile in freezing weather to get to work to finish a shift, according to local news outlets.

This weekend, the Texas Department of Transportation is warning residents to stay off the roads.

"Please please please stay home if possible. If you must drive, reduce your speed and increase your following distance," the department said on Twitter.

In Austin, first responders have faced hundreds more emergency calls than usual in recent days, according to local KXAN-TV.

"Y'all, it is COLD!" the Austin Fire Department wrote on Twitter Friday. "The roads are wet and slippery, and let's be honest ― we Texans aren't all that great at driving under these conditions. So if you can stay home, please do so!"

Other parts of the U.S., however, are seeing far colder temperatures. In Billings, Montana, the NWS said on Twitter late Friday that the area had spent 132 hours below zero and was expected to face nearly three more days of the freezing temps. "That's too many hours below 0°," the agency said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Snow, ice blast US as winter storms forecasted nationwide

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