New storms batter mid-Atlantic region
Utility companies still working to restore electricity to thousands of mid-Atlantic customers following last week’s storms faced new obstacles Thursday after more icy weather pulled down tree limbs and power lines. Roads were covered with freezing rain and slush from Virginia north to New Jersey and west into the Ohio Valley, and ice was up to a half-inch thick in western Maryland.
Warmer air was moving northward, however, with highs in the 40s expected in much of the area Thursday.
In North Carolina, Duke Power had 49,400 customers without power Thursday morning.
Fewer than 4,000 customers of Carolina Power & Light Co. lacked electricity, down from a peak of 464,000.
In western Maryland, nearly 26,000 Allegheny Energy customers were without power early Thursday. While most would have power restored by late Thursday, some will go without electricity until Saturday, an Allegheny spokeswoman said.
Potomac Electric Power Co. said 20,600 of its customers in Washington, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs were without power, mainly in Montgomery County. BGE had about 15,100 outages, largely in Maryland’s Carroll, Baltimore and Harford counties, spokesman Steve Unglesbee said.
In Charles Town, W.Va., a tractor-trailer driver who snagged drooping, ice-covered power lines as he was pulling into a race track Wednesday was temporarily trapped in his rig as 480-volt lines arced above him.
Up to 15 inches of snow fell in parts of eastern New York Thursday, closing schools and leaving about 5,000 households in the eastern and central parts of the state without power.
In western New York, Christine Dickerson, 18, was killed in a head-on crash blamed on slippery roads Wednesday, the Cattaraugus County sheriff’s department said.