Storm Socks East Coast, Inland California Gets Brief Rain Reprieve Before New Onslaught; Florida Digging Out
Thousands were left without light and heat Wednesday as a storm crawled along the East Coast and Appalachians, producing wind, rain and more than a foot of snow.
The storm, the same one that raked tornadoes across Florida earlier in the week, battered beaches Wednesday with waves driven by wind up to 58 mph and flooded low-lying areas with heavy rain.
An estimated 600 people had spent the night snowbound in shelters along a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 40 west of Knoxville, until the freeway was unclogged Wednesday afternoon.
At least four traffic-related deaths in Kentucky were blamed on the storm, as were three deaths in Georgia and one in Ohio. In South Carolina, a pregnant woman drowned when her car plunged into a swollen creek. One person was killed Monday in Florida.
In West Virginia, a recycling plant collapsed under heavy snow, killing two workers.
In the West, California streams receded after being driven out of their banks by torrential rainfall on Tuesday. However, more rain was expected during the night, with heavy snow likely in the mountains, and another storm was forecast from late Thursday into Friday.
California’s forecast was easy, said National Weather Service meteorologist Diana Henderson. “Rain. Lots and lots of rain.”
One man was killed by a falling tree in California and a second was missing in a swollen creek and presumed drowned.
Just a week earlier, another storm had dumped more than 3 feet of snow on the central Appalachians, stranding motorists and even train crews and knocking out power. Some of last week’s storm victims were still waiting for electricity when Wednesday’s storm hit.
Tennessee National Guard troops, state forestry workers, Highway Patrol troopers, wildlife officers and state and local emergency workers all had gone to the rescue of people stranded by snowbound and abandoned vehicles along I-40 about 100 miles west of Knoxville.
They walked along the 12 miles of stalled vehicles, giving food, blankets and gasoline to people staying with their cars and leading an estimated 600 others to 38 shelters in the Cookeville-Monterey area.
“We had two families with very young children - a 2-month-old baby and a 3-month-old baby - that we went out and rescued and got out of their stranded vehicles,” said Capt. Bobby Lee with the Army National Guard in Cookeville.
“They had been there all night. We took them to a shelter. The children are fine. They were a little cold, a little tired. But everybody was OK.”
Monterey, Va., had snowdrifts 3 to 4 feet high. Kentucky’s Lincoln County was buried under 15 to 18 inches of snow with drifts standing as high as 5 feet, said county Judge-Executive Jim Reed.
Some 68,000 residential and business customers were without electricity Wednesday in Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority said. Thousands more had been blacked out in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, western Maryland, and both North and South Carolina.
About 85,000 customers in Florida were still without electricity Wednesday after Monday’s storms brought tornadoes and drenching rain.
Gov. Lawton Chiles declared a statewide emergency as more bad weather was predicted for the weekend. A weather system moving in from the Gulf of Mexico was expected to produce more severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes.
National Guardsmen in Kentucky helped provide auxiliary power in places, and rescue workers also distributed kerosene-fueled heaters.
The fresh, soggy snow in West Virginia combined with the muddy leftovers of last week’s storm to form a slushy mess.