Winter’s Deadly Grip Paralyzes U.S. Midsection

A crippling winter storm rolled out of the nation’s midsection and into the Northeast on Thursday, knocking out power in hundreds of thousands of homes in a swath that stretched from Oklahoma City to Toledo, Ohio.

The belt of ice and snow at one point wreaked havoc from the Texas Panhandle to upstate New York, and nearly all points between. At least 15 deaths were blamed on slick roads or freezing temperatures.

At airports around the Midwest, passengers were stranded by the thousands. More than a foot of snow fell at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, causing cancellations, delays and headaches.

Hundreds of schools were closed Thursday in Oklahoma, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska and New York.

Oklahoma and Missouri were hit the hardest, with an icy rain lacquering everything in sight. Utility officials in Kansas said it was the worst storm in memory and warned it could be days before power is fully restored.

In the flat ranchland near Anadarko, Okla., cattle roamed free after heavy ice took down fences. In Perry, 100 miles away, decades-old elm and pecan trees littered city streets and county roads.

“It looked like a bomb went off in town,” Fire Chief Pete Tell said.

Kansas City Fire Chief Smokey Dyer said the fire risk soared overnight because of damaged electrical connections caused by fallen power lines.

“It was poppin’ like the Fourth of July back there,” said Doris McGee after a tree limb pulled down the backyard power line to her home.

The storm, centered over the Mississippi Valley, moved to the northeast through the day, pushing into New York and sending snow into New England. Up to a foot was forecast in some parts of the Northeast today.

Snow was piling up in New Hampshire late Thursday night as emergency crews responded to scores of traffic accidents.

At its peak, the storm left 270,000 customers without power in Kansas City and 200,000 more in Oklahoma. At least 185,000 were in the dark in parts of Michigan and Indiana.

“That makes this easily the worst storm we have ever experienced,” said Kansas City Power and Light spokesman Tom Robinson. “We need our customers to be prepared that this could last several days.”

Kansas City residents left in the cold and the dark stocked up on flashlights and cooking gas as temperatures dipped into the 20s. Utility crews called in from Minnesota to Texas worked around the clock.

“Winter is back,” said Dennis Burkheimer of the Iowa Department of Transportation.