A massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and paralyzing air and road traffic. Power lines were draped in ice, and hundreds of thousands of people in the Southeast were left without electricity.<\/p>\n
The ice and snowfall<\/a> were expected to continue into Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, which could cause \u201cdangerous travel and infrastructure impacts\u201d to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said. <\/p>\n Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while \u201ccatastrophic ice accumulation\u201d threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,\u201d weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. \u201cIt was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we\u2019re talking like a 2,000 mile spread.\u201d<\/p>\n President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.<\/p>\n New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was bracing for the longest cold stretch and highest snow totals it has seen in years. Communities near the Canadian border have already seen record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees<\/a> Fahrenheit (minus 37 degrees Celsius) and Copenhagen minus 49 F (minus 45 C), she said. <\/p>\n \u201cAn Arctic siege has taken over our state,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cIt is brutal, it is bone chilling and it is dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n Storm knocks out power and snarls flights<\/p>\n As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. The number of customers without power<\/a> topped 900,000, according to poweroutage.us<\/a>, and the number was rising.<\/p>\n Tennessee was hardest hit with nearly 325,000 customers out, and Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi all had more than 100,000 customers in the dark. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia.<\/p>\n