If you've had difficulties dealing
with the few inches of snow that fell on Britain this week,
spare a thought for our friends over the pond.
The Mid-West of America has been in
chaos over the last week due to horrific conditions. On
Thursday hundreds of people waited for help on a slippery
Texas highway, thousands remained without power and snow
piled up in the Dakotas and Minnesota.
Since Christmas Eve, icy storms have
snapped tree limbs and knocked out power to nearly 600,000
homes and businesses in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
Authorities blame at least 41 deaths on the bad weather:
22 in Texas, 11 in Oklahoma, four in New Mexico, two in
Arkansas and one each in Missouri and Minnesota. A Greyhound
bus rolled over on an icy stretch of Interstate 80 in Nebraska,
injuring 33 people.
Snow fell at an inch per hour in parts
of North Dakota and Minnesota, with Fargo, ND, getting 8
inches in a few hours. Iowa set a new record for December
snowfall, and the Mississippi River was largely frozen for
a 500-mile stretch from St Paul, Minn, to south of Rock
Island, Ill, delaying cargo shipments along one of the country's
major transportation arteries.
Trucks jackknifed and cars slid into
ditches, forcing the closing of a nearly 20-mile stretch
of highway. Some travelers were stranded for up to 12 hours.
Some drivers and their children passed the time by building
snowmen along I-20, and truckers hopped out of their rigs
to talk.
President Clinton declared parts of
his home state a disaster Thursday as hundreds of broken
magnolias littered Arkansas roads. More than 300,000 people
lost power during a Christmas Day storm, the second to hit
the state in as many weeks. Thousands of people shivered
without electricity as freezing rain fell again Thursday.
Some 210,000 customers were without power in Arkansas.
Clinton also declared a state emergency
in Oklahoma, where crews worked to restore power to 166,000
people after a weather system dropped freezing rain for
two days.
[Thanks to Global
Snowsports]
