In Oxford, Miss., oaks and magnolias drooped like willows on Monday, sagging under the ice glazing their branches. That is, of course, if the trees still stood, as many had not, crashing onto houses and vehicles and getting tangled in utility lines. The debris and ice had rendered many roadways impassable. In some parts of the city, residents were stuck in frigid conditions, without electricity or a ride to the shelter.
Robyn Tannehill, the mayor of Oxford, typed out a message on Facebook to her city on Sunday night, straining to capture the consequences of the winter storm that had bombarded Mississippi, like much of the country, over the weekend.
Some of what she saw was heartening, she said, like the crews “still giving it all they’ve got.” Even more of it was agonizing. “It looks like a tornado went down every street,” she wrote.
Last week, the forecasts had been alarming, with predictions of a powerful winter storm system sweeping through the South that had the potential to be among the worst in a generation. By Monday, it was clear that is exactly what happened.
The storm system has moved on, lashing New York and much of the Northeast. But a large expanse of the South was still reeling from the barrage of snow, ice and bitter cold. At least 10 people have died across the region. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses lost electricity. Many officials approached residents with the same message as Ms. Tannehill, who encouraged patience, even while acknowledging just how difficult that would be.
“I know people are frustrated,” Ms. Tannehill said in a news conference on Monday morning. “I know people are cold. I know there are people with needs that I cannot imagine. Please know that we are working as hard and as fast as we can to get your power back on.”
The storm system has had a massive reach, stretching from New Mexico to Maine, dumping at least a foot of snow in nearly half of the states in the contiguous United States. But the weather has had a particularly debilitating effect in the South, where experience with brutal winter conditions is limited, threatening to overwhelm infrastructure, tax the resources of local governments and catch residents off guard.
“We will get through this, but we’re not going to get through it today,” Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi said in a news conference on Monday. “And we’re not going to get through it tomorrow. This is going to take time.”
In Caddo Parish, in northwestern Louisiana, two people died of hypothermia, state health officials said. In nearby DeSoto Parish, an 86-year-old man died from carbon monoxide poisoning. In Arkansas, two people were killed in accidents involving all-terrain vehicles, including a 17-year-old boy who was being pulled by one while sledding. Two storm-related deaths were also reported in Mississippi.
Crews have been deployed across the region to clear roadways and restore power. But officials warned residents to brace themselves of the possibility of several more days without electricity.
In Nashville, Mayor Freddie O’Connell said the job would have to be done “circuit by circuit, neighborhood by neighborhood.”
The city, one of the hardest-hit metropolitan areas in the South, was coated in ice, with sunlight glittering off frozen tree branches and icicles hanging from power lines. The trunks of uprooted trees were in the air.
Nashville Electric Service said that as many as 230,000 people were without power at the peak, the largest number of simultaneous power outages in the agency’s history. That number has steadily dropped, falling to around 147,000 by Monday evening. Yet many residents were still struggling.
Harriet Wallace, spokeswoman for Metro Social Services in Nashville, said the agency had been hearing from many residents who needed food, and from seniors concerned about their power — both to keep warm or to keep their oxygen on. A woman from Atlanta had reached out to see if staff members could check on her elderly father, who was by himself.
“On our main line, a lot of people are calling for help,” Ms. Wallace said. “It’s been scary and it’s not going to let up for at least two or three more days.”
In Rabun County, Ga., tucked in the Appalachian Mountains and hugging the Tennessee state line, Scott Parrott did just about everything he could to prepare: The propane tank for his generator was refilled last week. He and his wife, Nancy, filled a bathtub with water and had a few cases of bottled water.
The couple has been without power since Saturday morning, but have relied on the generator. They’re hopeful they have enough fuel to last until electricity is restored. With 10-degree weather predicted for Monday night, the plan was to heat the house up before bed.
“Then we’ll shut the generator off and snuggle up,” Mr. Parrott said, “and we’ll get up first thing tomorrow morning and fire up the generator again.”
In and around Oxford, a city of about 26,000 people in northern Mississippi and the home of the University of Mississippi, most residents had lost power and temperatures had fallen at points to single digits. The conditions were severe enough that the university’s campus would remain closed until next Sunday, officials said.
“It’s kind of worst-case scenario that came to fruition for them,” said Caitlin Dirkes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
William Brock, who operates a tree-cutting service, traveled in from Montgomery, Ala., expecting he would have plenty of work in the coming days. “I will be making money off storming,” he said.
Just not yet. For now, he was pitching with rescue and relief, helping to clear some roads and driving families to warming centers.
He had to navigate country roads blocked by debris to reach one family of five stuck at home without electricity about 15 miles from Oxford. “I hiked my way into them and extracted them, and I drove them about an hour away to a family member’s house,” he said.
Mary Faye Knight was among those who remembered the storm in 1994 that was one of the last major ones to hit the area. “It came back to me Sunday morning when I stepped outside,” Ms. Knight, 48, said, “and I heard the limbs cracking and that sound that they make, the way it swooshes and falls.”
Clementine Bedsworth, 25, who works in Oxford and lives in the nearby town of Water Valley, has been without power since Saturday. She was jolted awake on Sunday morning by the thunder and cracking tree limbs. She was stunned by the devastation she saw after sunrise.
So much of the aftermath has been distressing and painful, she said: Friends whose homes were severely damaged, stranded in worse conditions than she was in. She had co-workers who were frightened to leave their homes. “The pictures of utter devastation of a town I love so dearly,” she said.
Still, she believed her patch of Mississippi would find its way through.
“We will overcome this — I know we will,” Ms. Bedsworth said. “But this is definitely going to go down in our history.”
Reporting was contributed by Emily Cochrane and Jamie McGee from Nashville, Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon and Sean Keenan from Atlanta, Eduardo Medina from Durham, N.C., and Cynthia Howle from Oxford, Miss.
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
The post Winter Storm Debilitates the South, Encasing Cities in Ice and Snow appeared first on New York Times.
