Snow and Ice Spawn Dangers on East Coast

Blowing snow and frigid winds blasted the Great Lakes region Wednesday while ice and snow paralyzed sections of the East Coast.

Freezing rain glazed roads and bridges in North Carolina, resulting in at least five fatalities from traffic accidents.

Since Christmas, at least 11 other deaths have been tied to frigid weather around the country.

At Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, an American Airlines jet hit a patch of ice and skidded off a taxiway about 8 a.m. No one was injured and the 69 passengers were taken to the terminal in a bus.

John and Eunice Burris of Rowan County in western North Carolina swam to the shore of High Rock Lake after their car skidded on ice, flipped over a bridge guardrail and landed in the cold water, said Rowan County Rescue Squad member Tim Hand. The couple was assisted by two passersby.

Up to six inches of snow blanketed parts of Virginia, and roads in Richmond were treacherous.

“We’re asking people to stay home and off the roads. There have been several accidents where people have slid off the road and into the woods,” Virginia State Police dispatcher Jennifer Beasley said in Richmond.

Most businesses remained closed after a thick coating of ice was hidden under light snow. Most roads were passable but dangerous, Beasley said.

Hundreds of accidents were reported in Kentucky after a snowstorm earlier in the week. The sun came out Wednesday and flurries ended before noon, but a cold front from the west was expected to produce single-digit temperatures.

A morning low temperature of 15 degrees below zero set a record for the date in Montpelier, Vt., and a morning low of 3 below set the record in Binghamton, N.Y., in the state’s southern tier.

Temperatures dipped to 3 degrees early Wednesday in Wheeling, W. Va., less than a day after the rest of the state received up to seven inches of snow.

By the time the new front reaches the East Coast on Friday, temperatures in northern Florida will be lower than those in southern Alaska, predicted Dale Mohler of Accu-Weather Inc., a private forecasting firm.

Relief for the eastern half of the nation will begin to arrive this weekend as temperatures revert to near-normal freezing levels, but another Arctic air snap was forecast to move in next week.

Snow fell in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

In Cleveland and other areas bordering Lake Erie, where residents were hit by up to three feet of snow over the weekend, more snow was expected.