Roads blocked, power lost in many U.S. regions as winter storm sweeps eastward

14 deaths reported

Fourteen deaths have been blamed on the weather since Monday; four in New Mexico, nine in Texas and one in Missouri. In that state, a 13-year-old girl was killed in Arnold after the pickup truck she was riding in went over the side of a bridge and plunged 50 feet into a river.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, Dave Kaffenberger closed off a few rooms of his house and gathered his family around the hearth after an ice storm knocked out the electricity.

"We lit a half-dozen candles and played Clue by candlelight," Kaffenberger said in his darkened home Wednesday. "It's an extended Christmas. That's the way I'm looking at it."

In New Mexico, Interstate 40 reopened Wednesday; it had been closed because of ice. But many roads in the southern part of the state remained closed.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee ordered the state government closed Wednesday, but later said state employees could return to work Thursday.

"We've had what is, I guess, the equivalent of a nuclear-type situation without radioactivity, because virtually everything is shut down," Huckabee told CNN via cell phone from the governor's mansion, where power and phone service were out. "We have 10 or 12 counties where every single person in that county has lost power, phone service, and water."

Huckabee said much of the damage was in rural areas, some of them inaccessible because downed trees were blocking many roads.

Power outages put much of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the dark. Residents made their way to public taps downtown for free hot water.

"I just came down to get a jug to make formula for the baby," said Fanessa Davenport, also filling juice bottles with water for an 86-year-old neighbor.

Kevin Byrd said he had to use a chain saw to cut his way to the downtown taps. "It looked like a tornado had been through," he said. "The biggest thing about it is not having power. Then you don't have your water pump."

Oklahoma declared a disaster area

In Oklahoma, Gov. Frank Keating declared the entire state a disaster area, and people without heat headed to shelters.

In the town of Ada, about half the town's residents remained without drinking water or power where falling tree limbs continued to cause problems, Assistant Police Chief Rick Carson said Wednesday.

"Even though there's not much wind, the limbs are just giving up and going down through the power lines," he said.

Josh Marks clears snow Wednesday from a frozen pond at Rising Park in Lancaster, Ohio

"Tell everyone to stay out of Oklahoma. We have power outages throughout the state; we have crashes everywhere," state trooper Brett Wallace told Reuters.

In Texarkana, which straddles the Texas-Arkansas line, officials ordered a nighttime curfew and froze all prices to prevent some from capitalizing on the city's troubles.

"Everywhere you look, trees are snapped like match sticks. Power lines are down everywhere and most of the streets are impassable because we don't know which lines are live," said Texarkana resident Nita Fran Hutcheson, who has had no water or electricity at her home since Monday.

Storms on the move

"At one point it looked as if this southern storm and a midwestern storm would meet up along the Midatlantic coast and perhaps become a nor'easter for the weekend," CNN Weather Anchor Karen Maginnis said Wednesday night. "However, now it appears the southern storm will eject into the Atlantic more quickly, so the midwestern storm will be the center of attention."

That system will move across the upper Midwest and into the Great Lakes region on Thursday, bringing near blizzard conditions to the northern plains.

The weather also caused more air travel disruptions Wednesday.

A note on American Airlines' Web site said some of its flights from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were delayed. Delta Air Lines had weather-related delays as well, according to its Web site.

Ice-encrusted trees and fences in the Flint Hills south of Emporia, Kansas, Wednesday

The Little Rock airport, closed since Monday, reopened Wednesday afternoon. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth.

Changing weather pattern

"I came South to get away from this," said Renee Puskas, a gas station manager in Hot Springs. "I told my kids I lived in Ohio all my life and I've never seen anything like this."

While the ice and snow may seem unusual for this part of the country, state EMA spokeswoman Teri Pfeiffer said it's really the return of a once-normal weather pattern.

"Arkansas is in a transition zone, so what's happened in the past seven or eight years, because of El Nino and La Nina, our winters have been mild and we haven't had a lot of ice and snow," Pfeiffer said. "In the past, we had ice and snow storms, and the weather pattern is changing again.

"People just weren't prepared this year, thinking that the winters were getting milder."