MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- A storm that brought snow, sleet, rain, ice and frigid temperatures to the U.S. midsection may cut electrical power from Texas to Kentucky, forecasters said.
The bone-numbing air gripped the center of the country Thursday, bringing sub-zero temps to the north, sleet as far south as central Texas, and snow accumulations of more than 4 feet in parts of northern Minnesota.
The National Weather Service in Duluth, Minn., said Two Harbors got 42 inches of snow, Beaver Bay got 34.5 inches, parts of Duluth got 29 inches and Duluth Airport got 23.3 inches, the Duluth News Tribune reported. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul received about 6 inches of snow Wednesday.
At least one person died because of weather conditions in Minnesota Wednesday, where state police reported 481 crashes across the state, including one fatality, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis reported. Authorities said a 16-year-old driver lost control of her car on a slushy road as she drove to school in a Minneapolis suburb and was killed in a collision with another vehicle.
AccuWeather.com said an ice storm may knock out electrical service Friday for hundreds of thousands of customers from northern Texas to western Kentucky.
The storm is expected to bring icy conditions to Dallas, Little Rock, Ark.; Cape Girardeau, Mo.; Memphis; Evansville, Ind.; and Louisville, Ky.
"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 AccuWeather.com's Jesse Ferrell.
Weather.com said the storm should bring an icy mix of freezing rain and sleet from West Texas into the Ozarks and expand across the Ohio Valley Thursday into Friday.
Entergy Arkansas Inc. said in a release it will have 6,700 people working on storm-related outages and Alabama Power said it was sending crews to Texas Thursday, AccuWeather.com reported.
The storm threatens two major weekend events in Dallas -- a holiday parade Saturday and the Dallas Marathon Sunday, CNN reported.
AccuWeather.com said a second round of ice will arrive in some sections this weekend, associated with another large storm in the U.S. Southwest.
The frigid temperatures in the Upper Midwest were expected to hang around through the weekend, with highs forecast in the single digits and wind chills driving the feels-like temperatures into double digits below zero.
The winter storm dumped locally heavy snow from the Rockies to the Upper Midwest, Weather.com reported.
Cold and freezing rain were forecast for the East and Southeast as the storm moves through.
The National Weather Service said heavy rain was possible from parts of the Central Appalachians to parts of the Lower Mississippi Valley, and heavy snow could fall from the Ohio Valley to the Middle Mississippi Valley, with temperatures 10 to 30 degrees below average from the Plains to parts of the Mississippi Valley.
The blast of Arctic air also threatened agricultural interests in California, where record-low temperatures are forecast in the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Coast, AccuWeather.com said.
Fresno is expected to get a record overnight low of 28 degrees while readings in the upper teens and lower 20s are expected around Paso Robles. San Luis Obispo may get an overnight low of 30.
