Detroit – The remnants of a huge winter storm plowed toward the East Coast on Sunday after dumping as much as 2 feet of snow in the upper Midwest, grounding hundreds of airline flights and closing major highways on the Plains. In the South, residents struggled to clean up after violent storms spawned by the same system.
Eight traffic deaths were blamed on the snowstorm, seven in Wisconsin and one in Kansas. The Southern storms injured 40.
Utility crews labored Sunday to restore power after the storm blacked out hundreds of thousands of homes and business in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio. Street and highway crews – nearly 300 snow- removal trucks and plows in Chicago – worked to clear pavement of snow and ice.
Moist air that the storm system pulled from the Gulf of Mexico fueled the violent thunderstorms in the South, sweeping cars off roads, crumpling businesses and sending mobile homes flying. Tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
By midday Sunday, snow was dwindling but still falling from the eastern Dakotas across the Great Lakes to the Washington area. Three inches of snow had fallen by midday Sunday at Cumberland, Md., and the District of Columbia declared a snow emergency, banning parking on major routes to make room for snowplows.
In New York, sanitation workers were preparing for 4 to 6 inches of snow expected to begin Sunday evening.
The storm’s snow, sleet and freezing rain led airlines to cancel hundreds of flights Sunday at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and dozens more at Midway Airport, said Wendy Abrams, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Aviation.
In Dumas, Ark., dozens of homes and businesses looked like they were shredded by “high explosives,” Lt. Gov. Bill Halter said Sunday as he surveyed the damage.
State police said all residents were accounted for following a door-to-door search of Dumas, where a tornado cut a swath through town and injured 27 people Saturday.
Two children, ages 5 and 7, were critically injured when the storm flipped their mobile home and trapped them inside, Desha County Sheriff Jim Snyder said. It took two hours for rescuers to get them out, he said.
