Winter storm brings freezing rain, snow to wide swath of US

Austin: A major winter storm with millions of Americans in its path brought a mix of rain, freezing rain and snow to the middle section of the United States on Wednesday as airlines canceled hundreds of flights, governors urged residents to stay off roads and schools closed campuses.

The blast of frigid weather, which began arriving Tuesday night, put a long stretch of states from New Mexico and Colorado to Maine under winter storm warnings and watches. On Wednesday morning, parts of Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan saw freezing rain, sleet and snow.

More than a foot of snow was possible in Michigan by the time the storm moves through, on the heels of a vicious nor'easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast.

"It will be a very messy system and will make travel very difficult, said Marty Rausch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

The footprint of the storm extended as far south as Texas, where nearly a year after a catastrophic freeze buckled the state's power grid in one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history, Gov. Greg Abbott defended the state's readiness. The forecast did not call for the same prolonged and frigid temperatures as the February 2021 storm and the National Weather Service said the system would, generally, not be as bad this time for Texas. No one can guarantee that there won't be any" outages caused by demand on the power grid, Abbott said Tuesday. But what we will work to achieve, and what we're prepared to achieve is that power is going to stay on across the entire state.

In November, Abbott had, in fact, made a guarantee for winter: I can guarantee the lights will stay on," he told Austin television station KTBC.

Abbott, whose handling of last year's blackouts is a top line of attack for Democrats as the Republican seeks a third term in 2022, said thousands of miles of roads in Texas will become "extraordinarily dangerous" over the coming days. Energy experts said the forecast this week, although below freezing, should not pose a challenge for Texas' grid. The question has always been if we get a repeat of last year, would the power stay on? And this is nowhere near a repeat of last year, said Doug Lewin, an energy consultant in Austin who has criticized Texas' response to the blackouts as insufficient.