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Snow and ice blasts through the South amid a powerful winter storm

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American Airlines ground crew personnel service commercial planes landing at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (Charlotte, North Carolina).

Robert Alexander | Archive Photos | Getty Images

High winds and ice combined with strong winds swept across the Southeast U.S. on Sunday. It knocked out power, caused tree and fence fellings, and coated roads in a frigid frost glaze.

Tens of thousands were left without electricity in Georgia, North Carolina. South Carolina, Florida. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center reports that more than one-inch of snow fell in certain parts of Georgia and Virginia.

In some areas of the South, air travel was made difficult by severe storms. According to a briefing, Charlotte Douglas International airport was still open at dawn on Sunday. But more than 1,000 Sunday flights in Charlotte have been cancelled – more than 80% of the airport’s Sunday schedule, according to the flight tracking service f lightaware.com. American Airlines has Charlotte as a main hub in South Carolina.

More than 300 Sunday flights were canceled in Atlanta, the main hub of Delta Air Lines.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Sunday air traffic control plan, conditions were likely to worsen further Sunday.

North Carolina was under winter storm warnings until Monday morning. Raleigh experienced a mixture of freezing precipitation. Local television cameras captured snowfall covering Asheville streets. Buncombe County shut down all libraries, parks and solid waste disposal facilities until Monday. Appalachian State University in Boone, northeast suspended all operations Sunday. It told everyone except essential workers that they would be staying off campus at least until Monday morning

More than 100,000 Georgians were without electricity on Sunday. The vast majority, however, were in northeast Georgia’s northeast mountains according to poweroutage.US. This website tracks outages all across America. More than half of the Georgia customers without power were in Rabun County. It is located in Georgia’s Northeast corner. South Carolina’s power grid was without electricity for approximately 50,000 people, while North Carolina power lines were down for 11,000 customers.

Although crews had pretreated roads in Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia with ice melts to make them safer for travelers, officials urged residents not to travel on these roads. According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol, some East Tennessee roads had become snow covered and there were several accidents caused by ice.

Greenville in South Carolina received an extraordinary snowfall that covered the roads, before turning to ice. Many areas of South Carolina were under winter storm warning due to winds reaching 40 mph (64 kilometers per hour).

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