31 million below iciness climate indicators

Good evening it is winter and its most challenging and ice storm gripping areas from Central Texas all the way to West Virginia tonight it has brought air and ground travel to a virtual stop in many parts of the region leaving at least two dead freezing rain and sleet creating Dreadful conditions on streets and highways causing hundreds of pileups and.

Accidents snarling traffic winter alerts posted right now for 31 million people and behind it all Heavy Rain on the way likely creating a flood risk as it spreads across the southeast and on top of it all the brutal coal that may soon grip cities like New York and Boston Al Roker has the forecast in just a moment but first Morgan chesky with the storm's.

Impact yeah Lester good evening and we knew this storm was going to be dangerous but in the last 24 hours unfortunately it has proven to be deadly the accidents on these icy roads now number in the hundreds and tonight we've learned that two of them are fatal tonight an icy Mass gripping the.

Southern Plains freezing nearly everything in its path it's a solid ice up my walkway there The Frigid mix of rain and sleet putting 31 million Americans under winter weather alerts the storm killing two people in Texas after icy collisions in Austin and Arlington many roads in Texas will remain very dangerous for the next 24 to.

48 hours the Texas governor adding any outages stem from ice buildup and not a failing power grid across the state highways turned into skating rinks causing hundreds of accidents and leaving some like this Dallas Transit bus stranded in the cold has it been this bad all morning you lose any kind of Attraction then.

This is what's going to happen the driver like so many others stuck until reinforcements could arrive sand trucks working overtime as precipitation froze on contact what's the biggest problem you've seen so far this right here it looks like snow but we're standing on sleet that's really turned into ice huh right.

At airports more than 1900 cancellations Nationwide with another 4 000 delays the FAA sang conditions may not improve till Thursday while in Arkansas where a state of emergency was declared these frozen power lines toppled over Catching Fire it's coming down pretty good the roads are already solid white solid white and solid ice one semi losing control so.

Badly cranes had to remove it in pieces as traffic backed up on a blocked I-40 for more than 15 miles tonight with warmer weather days away the polar threat remains far from over Morgan chesky NBC News Dallas indeed tens and millions remain under winter alerts it's bringing Al Roker Al how does this play out well we've got another 24 to 48.

Hours Lester as we mentioned 31 million people stretching from New Mexico all the way to the virginias winter storm watches warnings and Ice storms and you can see the problem has been we've had recurring areas of Frozen precipitation from Texas all the way to Kentucky and Tennessee that's going to continue we're talking more sleet and freezing rain.

Especially a good chunk of Texas is going to get about a quarter of an inch that means power lines down power outages and heavy rain with localized flooding possible Texas on into the Mississippi River Valley plus the Arctic highs we're talking wind chills of 5 to 20 degrees below and into the weekend 17 below air temperature in Burlington 15.

In Cincinnati listen all right Hal thank you thanks for watching our YouTube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app

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