A dangerous winter storm combining high winds and ice swept through parts of the US Southeast on Sunday, knocking out power, felling trees and fences and coating roads with a treacherous, frigid glaze.
Tens of thousands of custom rs were without power in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Highway patrols were reporting hundreds of vehicle accidents, and a tornado ripped through a trailer park in Florida.
More than 1,200 Sunday flights at Charlotte Douglas International were can-celed – more than 90 percent of the airport’s Sunday schedule, according to the flight tracking service flightaware.com.
Winter Storm Izzy dumped as much as 10 inches of snow in some areas of western North Carolina as the system moved across the southeastern US, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
First Sgt. Christopher Knox, a spokesman for the North Carolina Highway Patrol, said that by mi-dafternoon, the agency had responded to 300 car crashes and nearly 800 calls for service. Two people died Sunday when their car drove off the road and into trees in a median east of Raleigh.
The driver and passenger, both 41-year-old South Carolina residents, were pronounced dead at the scene of the single-vehi cle crash. Knox said investigators believe the car was driving too fast for the conditions, de-scribed as mixed winter precipitation.—Agencies
