A street sign is bent at a severe angle from a Christmas Day tornado in Mobile, Ala.
A powerful winter storm system that pounded the nation’s midsection, wrecking holiday travel plans and dumping a record snowfall in Arkansas, began lashing the Northeast on Wednesday with high winds, snow and sleet.
The storm, which knocked out power to thousands of homes, mainly in Arkansas, was blamed for at least six deaths.
Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed, scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid into drifts, and blizzard warnings were issued amid snowy gusts of 30 mph that blanketed roads and windshields, at times causing whiteout conditions.
The system, which spawned Gulf Coast region tornadoes on Christmas Day, pushed through the Upper Ohio Valley and headed into the Northeast Wednesday night. High winds, snow and sleet slickened roads in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Forecasts called for 12 to 18 inches of snow inland from western New York to Maine into today.
