A huge snowstorm roared through the Great Plains and Midwest on Friday, shutting thousands of schools and leaving a wake of broken trees, abandoned vehicles and more than 2 million homes and businesses without power.
At least nine deaths were linked to the storm. The storm, the season's first, stranded air travelers and coated roads with ice from Texas to Michigan as it moved toward Canada.
Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri declared a state of emergency for the entire state and said he was mobilizing National Guard troops and vehicles in St Louis County. In Kansas, Governor Kathleen Sebelius declared a state of disaster emergency for Harper and Leavenworth counties, bringing the state's total number of counties affected by the storm to 30 out of 105.
Air travel was disrupted throughout the region on Thursday and Friday. At Lambert-St Louis International Airport, half of Friday's flights were canceled -- an improvement from Thursday, when 223 of 367 flights were canceled, said Shirley Walls, a spokeswoman for the airport. Freezing rain followed by snow created thick ice around many of the grounded aircraft, causing further delays as ground crews labored to de-ice the planes.
"Flights coming into Lambert didn't have anywhere to park because the planes left overnight were still at the gates," Walls said.
At O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, a FedEx cargo plane slid off the runway and became stuck in mud after landing on Friday morning. A second cargo plane was struck by lightning on Friday. There were no injuries in either incident.
More than 450 flights were canceled from 6am to noon on Friday at O'Hare, said Wendy Abrams, a spokeswoman for the city's aviation department.
Highways were also hit hard. On Thursday, a 16-vehicle pileup involving an ambulance and eight semitrailers forced the closure of Interstate 40 in central Oklahoma for nearly 13 hours.
Icy roads and white-out conditions also caused the Missouri Department of Transportation to shut down a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 70 in the central portion of that state for several hours on Friday morning.
More than 500,000 of the energy provider Ameren's 2.4 million customers in the St Louis area and southern and central Illinois were without power as of 5:30pm on Friday, said a company spokeswoman.
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