Emergency crews dispatched to icy interstate highways in Mississippi worked overnight and into Wednesday morning to clear stranded vehicles as the eastern U.S. endured what forecasters said could become its longest period of freezing cold in decades.
Officials sent tow trucks and drones to help drivers stuck in snarled traffic on Interstate 55 in northern Mississippi and other major highways, Gov. Tate Reeves said in a social media post. He said crews were still working Wednesday morning and urged people to stay off the roads.
“And pray for the first responders that are doing what Mississippians do — going above and beyond for their fellow man,” Reeves posted Wednesday on X.
Most of the eastern U.S. was still grappling with frigid weather days after a weekend storm blasted the Northeast and parts of the South with snow and ice.
More than 380,000 homes and businesses, most of them in Mississippi and Tennessee, remained without electricity, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us. And at least 50 people had been reported dead in states afflicted by the dangerous cold.
The toll includes three Texas brothers — ages 6, 8 and 9 — who perished after falling through the frozen surface of a pond in Texas. Another child, a toddler, died at a Virginia hospital after being pulled from a frigid pond Monday, according to local police.
Temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast were forecast to remain well below freezing throughout the day Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Residents still shivering in the South were getting little relief. In Nashville, Tennessee, where nearly 100,000 power outages lingered early Wednesday, high temperatures were to rise just above freezing before plunging to 13 F (minus 10 C) overnight.
Forecasters predicted even colder weather for much of the U.S. this weekend. A new blast of arctic air is expected Friday and Saturday from the northern Plains to the Southeast. The weather service said the prolonged freeze “could be the longest duration of cold in several decades.”
Forecasters said there’s an increasing chance of heavy snow this weekend in the Carolinas and parts of Virginia, with more snowfall possible from Georgia to Maine.
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
