Snow fell across a large swath of the Northeast with some areas expecting more than a foot of snow on Saturday.
– The winter-weary Northeast and upper Midwest were digging out Saturday from heavy snowfall while cleanup began in battered parts of the South and Midwest after produced ferocious winds that left widespread damage and caused multiple deaths.
Hundreds of businesses were closed, many flights were canceled and some bus service was suspended. The heavy, wet snow was accompanied by winds gusting to 40 to 50 mph , raising concerns about toppled trees and power outages, said meteorologist Jon Palmer with the National Weather Service in Maine. Master Trooper James R. Bailey, 50, was hit while deploying stop sticks on Interstate 69 near Auburn to stop a speeding vehicle fleeing Fort Wayne police, state police said. Bailey later died at a hospital. He had spent more than 15 years with the state police. A 42-year-old Marion, Indiana, man was arrested and faces a charge of resisting law enforcement causing death to a law enforcement officer.
“At the end of the ice storm — Sunday and Monday — I was starting to get very depressed,” Burnett told The Associated Press on Saturday. “When it started snowing and I saw it was heavy, wet snow, I was really worried.”The sprawling storm system spawned straight-line winds, possible tornadoes and powerful thunderstorms in the South on Friday.
Kentucky’s electric cooperatives reported hundreds of snapped utility poles and thousands of power lines down across the Bluegrass State. Soft ground from heavy rains slowed the progress of heavy equipment to access damaged infrastructure. In Alabama, a 70-year-old man sitting in his truck in Talledega County was killed when a tree fell onto his vehicle. A 43-year-old man in Lauderdale County and a man in Huntsville also were killed by falling trees Friday, local authorities said. Heavy rain caused flooding in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.