Workers removed a tree that fell across a car in Odessa, Texas, on Monday after freezing rain and sleet swept across the area.
A storm system that has caused at least eight deaths across the West and Midwest is headed east and expected to bring snow, rain and strong winds that may disrupt Thanksgiving travel over a large area of the country, forecasters said Monday.
Winter storm warnings were in effect in parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas as freezing rain led to ice accumulation on roads and bridges, the National Weather Service said. Busy airports along the East Coast, including those in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, are likely to avoid the brunt of the storms, but each of those cities will receive two to four inches of rain beginning Wednesday. As much as 10 inches of snow could fall over the Appalachian Mountains, complicating highway travel in that area, said Bruce Terry, the lead forecaster with the National Weather Service.
The mountains of North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York and into northern New England are expected to get the heaviest snowfall. The snow is “going to start having an impact on Tuesday,” Mr. Terry said.
The inclement weather comes as millions of people take to the air and roads for the Thanksgiving holiday. More than 40 million people are expected to drive or fly at least 50 miles for Thanksgiving, with Wednesday expected to be the single busiest day, according to the AAA, the automobile association.
The weather system, which is expected to link up with a weather front moving north out of the Gulf of Mexico over the next few days, will also bring sleet and frozen rain. It is forecast to reach northern Georgia by Tuesday afternoon, Washington and New York City by Wednesday afternoon, and New England by Wednesday evening, meteorologists said.
As it has moved eastward, the front has caused many accidents, including the death of a 52-year-old California woman hit by a falling tree last week as she sat in her car in Yuba County, north of Sacramento, according to the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office.
The storm has also dumped more than 11 inches of snow on Flagstaff, in the mountains of Northern Arizona. And the two-and-a-half inches of rain that fell from Thursday through Saturday at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport represented the second wettest three-day period on record in that city during November, according to the National Weather Service.
Over the weekend, the system dropped nearly 12 inches of snow in western Oklahoma, and at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, sleet and icy conditions caused hundreds of flight cancellations and delays.
