Ice storm wallops Southeast, stranding drivers, cutting power (2)

Three hours later, she still had miles to go. So, too, did the rest of her family who were stuck in traffic across the region. "My daughter was stranded trying to get from her gymnastics class in Apex. My ex-husband is trying to get her and he got trapped," she said by telephone, referring to a Raleigh suburb. "My husband is in Charlotte and says things are bad. All the gas stations are shutting down, and I had trouble trying to gas up." 'Our own trucks are stuck' There are snowplows on the roads but "unfortunately some of our own trucks are stuck in the same traffic jams that a lot of other people are and they're having a hard time getting to the roads that need to be cleared," said Dan Howe, Raleigh's assistant city manager. The low-pressure weather system bringing the snow and ice to the Southeast is expected to move up the East Coast, dropping snow on the Northeast. Six to 8 inches are predicted for Washington, with especially heavy snowfall Thursday morning, and 6 to 10 inches on New York from midnight Wednesday into Thursday, with a combination of snow, sleet and rain continuing until Friday morning. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo told state agencies to prepare "for an impending nor'easter" and asked residents to avoid unnecessary travel. Power outages More than 480,000 customers were without power in the Southeast, roughly 136,000 of whom were Georgia Power Co. customers, the utility said. South Carolina was the hardest hit, with about 220,000 customers without electricity, while Wilmington, North Carolina, accounted for more than 58,000 outages. The utilities said Wednesday morning they expect those numbers to rise over the next 24 hours. Georgia Power, the state's largest utility, warned that hundreds of thousands could be without electricity for days. "This has the opportunity to be a huge event when you're talking about the amount of ice you're looking at," Aaron Strickland, Georgia Power's emergency operations chief, told reporters. The utility staged fleets of trucks across the area. Teams from Florida, Texas and Ohio bolstered local line crews. Transportation woes The storm system also was taking its toll on travel. Amtrak suspended some rail service in the Northeast, South and Mid-Atlantic regions for Wednesday. Nationwide, more than 3,300 flights were canceled Wednesday and even more were planned for Thursday, according to F lightAware.com. Among the canceled flights were more than 1,600 in and out of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Internationanl Airport. Charlotte Douglas International and Raleigh-Durham International airports accounted for the majority of other flights canceled. Deadly toll At least 10 deaths have been blamed on the weather, including a 55-year-old man who was killed in a head-on collision in Virginia, authorities said. Two people were killed in Georgia, and two died in North Carolina, they said. In Texas, three people died when an ambulance driver lost control on an icy patch of road outside of Carlsbad, the state Department of Public Safety said. A patient, a paramedic and another passenger were pronounced dead at the scene. In Mississippi, authorities blamed the storm for two traffic deaths. Stir-crazy? How to stay sane. It's not the snow, it's the ice. Travelers get another winter wallop