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A massive winter storm<\/a> dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and halting air and road traffic. Tree branches and power lines snapped under the weight of ice, and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the Southeast were left without electricity.<\/p>\n The ice and snowfall<\/a> were expected to continue into Monday followed by very low temperatures which could cause \u201cdangerous travel and infrastructure impacts\u201d for days, the National Weather Service said. <\/p>\n Heavy snow was falling from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while \u201ccatastrophic ice accumulation\u201d threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,\u201d weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. \u201cIt was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we\u2019re talking like a 2,000-mile spread.\u201d<\/p>\n President Donald Trump approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had rescue teams and supplies in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.<\/p>\n In New York, communities near the Canadian border saw record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees<\/a> Fahrenheit (minus 37 degrees Celsius) and Copenhagen minus 49 F (minus 45 C), Gov. Kathy Hochul said.<\/p>\n Freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South. In Corinth, Mississippi, heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cMay God have mercy on Corinth, MS! … The sound of the trees snapping, exploding & falling through the night have been unnerving to say the least,\u201d resident Kathy Ragan wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n In Clarksdale, Mississippi, Sanford Johnson said enough snow and sleet fell that few motorists ventured out.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to break it to my youngest daughter that the play date she scheduled likely won\u2019t happen today. We have no plans on driving,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n It already was Mississippi’s worst ice storm since 1994 with its biggest-ever deployment of ice-melting chemicals \u2014 200,000 gallons (750,000 liters) \u2014 plus salt and sand on roads, Gov. Tate Reeves said at a news conference.<\/p>\n He urged people not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. \u201cDo please reach out to friends and family,” Reeves added.<\/p>\n In Nashville, Tennessee, Jami Joe, 41, feared her electricity might not last as ice-heavy limbs from oak and pecan trees continued to crash around her house. \u201cIt\u2019s only a matter of time if a limb strikes a power line,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Because of icy roads, Josh Martin figured he and his wife, Misti, were \u201clocked in\u201d for a while at their home on a steep hill in Columbia, Tennessee. <\/p>\n \u201cGetting in and out of the neighborhood is not an option,\u201d Martin said. \u201cI can get down because gravity will take me, but I could not get back up.\u201d<\/p>\n Elsewhere, deep snow \u2014 over a foot (30 centimeters) in a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) swath from Arkansas to New England \u2014 halted traffic and canceled flights.<\/p>\n On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, January Cotrel enjoyed the fresh snow on a block that always closes during snowstorms for residents to sled, throw snowballs and make snowmen.<\/p>\n \u201cI pray for two feet every time we get a snowstorm. I want as much as we can get,\u201d she said. \u201cLet the city just shut down for a day and it\u2019s beautiful, and then we can get back to life.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power<\/a> according to poweroutage.us<\/a>, with Tennessee and Mississippi hit especially hard.<\/p>\n Some 12,000 flights were canceled Sunday and nearly 20,000 were delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com<\/a>. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey were among those impacted.<\/p>\n The danger will continue after the ice and snow, Santorelli warned.<\/p>\n \u201cBehind the storm it\u2019s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,\u201d she said. That means ice and snow won\u2019t melt as fast, which could hinder efforts to restore power.<\/p>\n In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation. He urged people to stay inside and off the roads: \u201cWe want every single New Yorker to make it through this storm.\u201d<\/p>\n Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department.<\/p>\n Across the affected areas, schools and universities announced that classes would be canceled or held remotely Monday.<\/p>\n In Oxford, Mississippi, police appealed for residents to stay home. Utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.<\/p>\n \u201cDue to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,\u201d the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. \u201cTrees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”<\/p>\n Oxford city officials posted dramatic photos on social media of slick roads and ice-coated trees sagging or breaking under the added weight.<\/p>\n In Tennessee, emergency officials urged motorists to give crews space to treat roads as drivers have been crashing into them.<\/p>\n Icy roads also made travel dangerous in north Georgia, where the Cherokee County Sheriff\u2019s office posted on Facebook, \u201cYou know it\u2019s bad when Waffle House is closed!!!\u201d along with a photo of a shuttered restaurant. Whether the chain\u2019s restaurants are open \u2014 known as the Waffle House Index<\/a> \u2014 has become an informal way to gauge the severity of weather disasters across the South.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Brumback reported from Atlanta. Walker reported from New York. Kristin Hall and Jonathan Mattise Nashville, Philip Marcelo in New York, Ed White in Detroit, Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia, and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n