Chilly Christmas across the nation
Mother Nature delivered a bone-chilling Christmas to much of the nation Saturday, but holiday travelers made it out in droves despite record snow that shut down highways two days earlier in the central states.
South Texas awoke to a rare blanket of snow, when up to 13 inches shattered records for the region. The deep freeze brought Victoria, Texas, its first white Christmas in 86 years and snarled holiday plans for thousands of travelers.
“It’s totally snowed over,” Tawnya Evans, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Corpus Christi, said Saturday. “It’s unusual to see that here.”
“A bunch of people are excited because it’s a white Christmas.”
The snow was expected to melt as temperatures warmed into the 30s and 40s throughout Christmas Day, but Evans said some of it could refreeze overnight.
Conditions on Indiana highways were improving Saturday, two days after a winter storm dumped up to 2 feet of snow in some areas, followed by subzero temperatures.
Indiana State Police said Interstate 65 near Seymour was still slick in spots on Saturday, but traffic was moving. They said almost all highways in southern Indiana were still covered by snow or ice.
The wintry mix caused hours-long delays on I-65 about midway between Indianapolis and Louisville, Ky., on Friday, when several semi-trailers were jackknifed or stuck.
Authorities reopened a portion of Interstate 64 from the Illinois state line to Evansville in southwestern Indiana on Friday, a day after more than 100 stranded travelers were rescued from their snowbound vehicles, which hampered snow and salt trucks from clearing the highway, police said.
In Ohio, about 175,000 homes and businesses remained without power – down from 327,000 on Thursday. Some customers might not have electricity restored until Monday, American Electric Power officials said.
A few small churches in rural areas of south-central Indiana canceled Christmas services, while even more called off Christmas Eve services to keep parishioners off the treacherous roadways.
Startled New Orleans residents saw snow falling steadily – the first Christmas snow in 50 years and the first time in 15 years the city recorded any snowfall at all. Most of the flakes melted when they hit ground, but cars and lawns showed a modest layer of white.
Freezing rain, sleet and low temperatures forced Louisiana state police to shut down interstates and state highways on Saturday.
The New Orleans mass transit system halted all its buses and streetcars because of sleet and icy streets and rail tracks, spokeswoman Rosalind Cook said. “They’re having problems … with the buses operating and some of our operators are having trouble getting into work,” Cook said.
Still, AAA predicted a record 62 million people, including about 51 million motorists, would be traveling this weekend and next, when New Year’s Eve also falls on a weekend.
“We feel it’s attributed to consumer confidence being up and people feeling more comfortable traveling post Sept. 11,” national AAA spokeswoman Aymee Ruiz said Saturday.