Icy roads have killed an estimated 22 people in Texas, but trucker Mark Heath was smart and pulled off the road to wait it out between Abilene and Fort Worth. The million-mile safe driver was featured by phone in an interview with CNN yesterday morning.
"If you don't have to be out there, you don't need to be out there on this mess," he told CNN anchor Daryn Kagan.
Heath, who was headed west to California with a load of air conditioning ducts, stressed the message "safety first."
Winter storm warnings were canceled in Texas and other southern plains states yesterday as the storm moved into the upper plains and headed toward the Northeast, but roads were still hazardous.
"The ice storm is officially over, but several cold air masses will be moving in, so we're not looking for a big thaw for the next couple of days," said John Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Little Rock, Ark., in an interview with Reuters news service.
Traffic was moving again Thursday afternoon on Ranger Hill, reported CNN. About 1,000 people were stuck on the steep incline on I-20 west of Forth Worth Wednesday night after a stretch of the highway was closed because of icy conditions. Traffic was backed up for 20 miles after two trucks crashed during a heavy snowstorm Wednesday evening and blocked the roadway.
The governor of Oklahoma declared the whole state a disaster area. One trooper told Reuters news service, "Tell everyone to stay out of Oklahoma. We have power outages throughout the state; we have crashes everywhere."
In Nebraska, a Greyhound bus rolled over on an icy stretch of I-80 early Thursday, injuring 29 of the 39 passengers.
Up to 8 inches of snow was forecast for parts of North Dakota and Minnesota yesterday. Snow was also expected in southern Wisconsin, eastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois by last night. Highways in western Maryland and eastern West Virginia were also expected to be slippery.
If you're headed into the Northeast this weekend, watch out for two storms that are expected to collide. The storm system that coated the southern Plains with ice and snow was expected to move up the East Coast, while a fast-moving "Alberta Clipper" storm swooped in from Canada into the northern Plains and moved through the Great Lakes. Forecasters predict the two storms will merge over the East Coast by Saturday.